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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



MOTION PICTURE 
DIRECTING 

THE FACTS AND THEORIES 
OF THE NEWEST ART 

By PETER MILNE 

Motion Picture critic for over six years on 
Motion Picture Neivs, Picture Play Magazine 
and Wid's {Film) Daily; and member sce- 
nario and production department of Famous 
Players-Lasky Corporation. 



Published and Copyrighted by 

FALK PUBLISHING CO., Inc. 

145 West 36th Street, New York 



Used as a Supplementary Text in 

New York Institute of Photography 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BROOKLYN 



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Copyright 1922 

by 

FALK PUBLISHING CO., INC. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



SEP » 1 1922 



©CI, A R R 1 7 2 5 



CONTENTS 

The Great and the Less Great 8 

The Picture Sense 20 

Preparation for Production 29 

The Method of William De Mille 37 

Cecil De Mille Also Speaks 47 

. When Acting Ability Helps 57 

Rex Ingram on "Atmosphere" 61 

Mainly About D. W., Griffith 70 

Mountains and Molehills 82 

Some of the Arts of Slapstick Comedy 90 

Other Tricks Up Directors' Sleeves 100^ 

Some Words from Frank Borzage 110 

What Tempo Means in Directing 120 

"Overshooting" — and the serial 126 

The Method of Thomas H. Ince 135 

Directors Schooled by Ince 146 

Who Creates a Picture 152 

Music in Picture Production 1 161 

Just Suppose 165 

"Stealing" an Exterior 176 

The Importance of the Art Director 183 

Directorial Conventions 189 

Ernst Lubitsch : German Director 195 

Joe May : German Director 205 

Illustrating the Use of Detail 213 

Marshall Neilan Summarizes 219 

''Best Directed" Pictures 229 



■i^ 



PREFACE 

The observations on the art of directing motion 
pictures included in this book are not by any means 
intended as lessons for the layman with ambitions 
pointing him toward this goal. To teach the craft 
through the printed page is as impossible of accom- 
plishment as instructing a steeple-jack in his trade 
through correspondence school. "A director must be 
born, not made." This old adage, adapted to our 
present situation, is of a necessity partially false, in- 
asmuch as at the time of the present day directors' 
initial birthdays there was no such thing as motion 
picture production. Still it is true in a sense. Because 
to direct for the screen requires a personality and an 
ability, blending so many elements of generalship and 
technique that to studiously require them is next to 
an impossibility. 

Be that as it may, the motion picture of today is 
developing its own directors. It has reached out to 
all businesses and arts and drafted men who are now 
headed for top positions in the ranks of directorial 
artists. Besides it offers the most humble of the studio 
staff the opportunity to rise to the top. 

During recent years cameramen, property men, au- 
thors, continuity writers, artists of brush and of pen 
and ink, actors and business men from varying lines 
have become identified with the art of motion picture 
directing. The law of averages has declared that many 
of these should fall short of success. Many have. 



But others have succeeded, have succeeded even beyond 
the expectations of their sponsors. Therefore it may 
safely be said that the gates to the field of motion 
picture directing are ready to open to all-comers, pro- 
vided that the aspirants have the inborn abilities and 
personal makeup that are rigidly required. 

These abilities, essential qualities and characteristics 
are dealt with in the following chapters by the under- 
signed who has spent nearly ten years in the motion 
picture industry, serving in the capacities of critic and 
continuity writer. 

These abilities, essential qualities and characteristics 
are, therefore, set down here as first hand observations. 
But they are never intended as lessons that will produce 
immediate results in the way of lucrative positions. 
No reader of this volume can go dashing home to his 
eager wife with that much advertised greeting: "Dearl 
I've got that job 1 The New York Institute's book on 
directing produced 100 per cent results 1" 

It is hoped, however, that it will give those who 
have the patience to peruse it something of an insight 
into the tremendous responsibilities that rest on the 
shoulders of the conscientious director. At present 
most people seem to believe that that line on the screen : 

"Directed by " just stands for a lucky fellow 

having a grand and glorious fling within the walls of a 
motion picture studio. 

Peter Milne. 



frith grateful thanks and appreciation for 
the vieivs expressed therein by Marshall 
Neilan, William C. De Mille, Rex Ingram, 
Cecil B. De Mille, Frank Borzage, Edward 
Dillon, Ernst Lubitsch; and the representa- 
tives of D. JV. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince, 
and other artists herein referred to, <whose 
co-operation has made this book possible. 



Chapter I 

THE GREAT AND THE 
LESS GREAT 

J^MOTIONAL experience 
and the capacity for endur- 
ing and retaining mental pic- 
tures of such experiences — these 
constitute the chief asset that dis- 
tinguishes the master director 
from the rank and file. Prac- 
tical explanations and a word of 
warning 



8 



Chapter I 

What is the fundamental asset that makes the great 
motion picture director? The requisite that distin- 
guishes the real artist from the rank and file? It is 
really the same asset that distinguishes the great artist 
in any walk of art from the less great. 

When you put this question to a selected group of 
directors you are liable to receive a different answer 
from each one. In fact several were approached on 
the subject before this chapter was written. And very 
few of them agreed with one another. A still smaller 
number hit upon what seems the correct answer to the 
question. 

It is quite true that the ability to "feel" a story and 
each one of its individual scenes, counts a lot in a 
director's favor. The proper "atmosphere," the di- 
rector's ability to achieve it, is vastly important. So 
also it is important to have the ability to properly 
"visualize" the continuous action of a picture even 
before the cameraman has once turned his crank. 

But after all has been said and done on these scores 
it remains that the one determining factor that dis- 
tinguishes the great from the near-great in the picture 
producing art is experience. 

Other requirements are important, vastly so, but 
first of all and in capital letters EXPERIENCE. 

It is fondly hoped that no one will presume to take 
this literally to the very capital letter. To produce a 
realistic crook story a director must not, of necessity, 



MOTION PICT U RE DIRECTING 

turn Raffles for a night. Nor to portray the effects of 
African "yaka water" on a white man, must he subject 
himself to a long seige of the drug itself. And doubtless 
a capable director can successfully picturize the life 
of a pearl fisher without diving into the briny deep. 

Such specific experiences are not within the span 
of any one man's life. A director might know Africa 
thoroughly, might know what "yaka water" was as well 
as a "madiera chair" and then be handed a manuscript 
containing such nautical terms as "chain box," "cap- 
san," "seacock" and "chain cable." As a consequence 
a director must always hold himself in readiness for 
research work when a 'script containing such foreign 
terms comes his way. 

But these experiences are largely physical experi- 
ences. And they are very minor when it comes to a 
summing up. No matter what peculiar terms and 
words are used in a story, it is the emotional content 
of it that counts as of greatest importance. Therefore 
the director with the most complete groundwork of 
emotional experience is the man most properly equip- 
ped to rise above his fellows. This groundwork of 
experience takes the shape of an emotional arc, an arc 
that includes on its line points representing each human 
emotion of life, reduced to specific and commonplace 
fundamentals. The more points of emotion upon the 
director's arc, the better craftsman he is. 

Diagrams properly don't belong in books written 
upon an art such as directing. They should be confined 
to volumes on mathematics and astronomy, but a simple 

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MOTION PI CTURE DIRECTING 

one introduced here will assist in illustrating the above 
point clearly. 

Now let the arc pictured illustrate the entire 
span of emotional experience possible for a certain 
man, our great director, to have undergone. Say that 
the line and point A represent the emotion of suffering. 

Our director has suffered in his early career. Per- 
haps he has slept on a park bench on a cold night with 
newspapers stuffed among his thin clothes to guard 
against the wind. His sleep has been fitful and in his 
moments of awakening he has thought the whole world 
against him — and roundly cursed it. In the morning 
he has risen with his bones aching and not even the 
two cents in his trousers necessary for the purchase of 
a cup of boiled muddy water called coffee down the 
line at Ben's Busy Bee. 

This is a not uncommon case of suffering, specially 
in the world of make-believe, where genius is raised 
from poverty to affluence sometimes within the short 
space of a single day. 

But while it is being experienced it is doubtless one 
of the most terrible adventures ever visited upon a 
human being. As a consequence in later years this 
experience of acute suffering remains stamped, con- 
sciously or subconsciously, on the individual's mind. 

Now to the point where this experience will tell 
when the individual has become a director. The di- 
rector is called upon to stage, we will say, the scene of 
Napoleon, a prisoner of the European powers on the 
island of St. Helena. 

How can the director know how Napoleon felt? 

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THE GREAT AND THE LESS GREAT 

What does he know about his attitude of mind? The 
answers are he knows everything. Back in the pho- 
tographic gallery of his mind he reaches for that scene 
of himself on the park bench. He recalls that that 
was the night during which he suffered, in his own 
mind, even to the extent that Napoleon had suffered. 

Therefore, still in his mind's eye, our director refers 
to his arc of emotional experience. The point A rep- 
resents the height of his suffering. He then merely 
extends the line A out and beyond his own emotional 
arc until it crosses the emotional arc of Napoleon at 
the point where he suffered the tortures of defeat, dis- 
illusionment and imprisonment. 

On the other hand perhaps the scene of suffering 
that our director will be called upon to reproduce on 
the screen is one less important or vivid than his own. 
It might be a scene of a little boy stammering out his 
first lesson in school. Suffering, to be sure, but not of 
such great magnitude. In this case the line A is merely 
extended downward until the little boy's emotional 
arc is reached. 

To reduce such a process of the intellect is indeed 
dangerous. An individual's emotional experience is 
no matter of diagrammatical science. However this 
science is purely imaginary. The whole process is 
carried out in the director's brain. It is only the fact 
that it is here reduced to cold type that makes it seem 
rather brutal. 

Perhaps certain directors will scoff at the idea but 
to those it may be replied that they use such a process 
of reasoning whether they know it or not. The whole 

15 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

working out of the scheme is mechanical and subcon- 
scious to a certain extent. 

Perhaps, too, there are those among the directors who 
believe that their moments of supreme suffering, park 
bench or otherwise, were far greater than Napoleon's 
sufferings. Nevertheless their own arcs of emotional 
experience still serve their good steads. Such a director 
merely reverses the process and goes down the line A 
until he reaches what he believes the arc of Napoleon, 
instead of going up the line. Such conceit on the part 
of the director does not, however, lead to the best 
results. 

By the same process the director is able to live in his 
mind the greatest case of self-sacrifice that the world 
has ever known, provided that at one time in his career 
he has made a self-sacrifice that loomed of tremendous 
proportions at the time. His line of sacrifice, B, is 
followed to the point where it cuts the arc containing 
the greatest sacrificial act of the world. And of course 
on the line, B, as on all the other lines from all the other 
points innumerable other arcs cut across representing 
cases of emotion between the greatest and the humblest. 

And so by his own experience, no matter how small 
or how large it is in comparison to the experience he 
is to picturize, the director is able to give a realistic 
and sensitive representation of it on the motion picture 
screen. 

The case holds the same with all the other emotions 
of life. Perhaps with the case of love it is a bit different. 
For in the matter of other emotions the director may 
grant that someone else has experienced them in great- 

16 



THE GREAT AND THE LESS GREAT 

er degree than he. But with the matter of his own 
romance or romances — no I All directors have no hesi- 
tancy in claiming, only to themselves of course, that 
theirs is the greatest in the world. Consequently there 
is no line C, but just the point. It is stationary. The 
director follows it neither up nor down to reach out for 
some similar point on another arc. Thus it is that 
romantic scenes are quite the most frequently done 
realistically and properly of all the emotional scenes 
contrived for the screen. This time the director's con- 
ceit does not stand in his way. 

For the rest the great director's arc of emotional 
experience contains every emotion, every cross and mix- 
ture of emotions, that he has lived through during his 
life. His arc contains hundreds of lines, each one dis- 
tinguished from the other by less than a hair's breadth. 
And yet, when he comes to employ the arc in his work, 
the exact line he desires immediately stands out in bold 
relief from the others and the director sets to work 
upon it. 

Thus the greatest directors of today are the men who 
have run the greatest gamut of emotional experience. 
To converse with D. W. Griffith is to instantly realize 
that here is a man who has suffered, sacrificed, lost, 
loved, triumphed. His brain is a storehouse of emo- 
tional experience, his own particular arc contains so 
many points upon it that a dozen times a dozen alpha- 
bets would not suffice to represent them all. 

Thomas H. Ince has confessed to tramping Broad- 
way searching for work. Chance led him to the old 
Biograph studio. Today he is among the greatest 

17 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

producers in the art. And it is a safe wager that his 
beginnings and struggles have not been obliterated from 
his mind by his success — rather they have been re- 
sponsible for it. 

Charles Chaplin, greatest comedian in the world 
and his own director gives evidence in each of his pic- 
tures, mute, grand evidence of the sufferings, the 
sacrifices, the little joys and triumphs of the days of 
his youth when he had nothing. 

And so does every great director today show in his 
pictures, whether he knows it or not, the experiences 
in his emotional career. 

And let it be said also that the less great display a 
remarkable lack of experience. 

It must be reiterated here that these chapters are 
not to be taken in the light of a text book. The writer 
would have a holy horror of having on his mind a 
happily married family man, who tossed up his busi- 
ness and his bank account to sleep on a park bench, 
and who tossed up his wife and children to enter upon 
one illicit love affair after another, just to complete his 
arc of emotional experience, because it has been stated 
here that the fullest arc produces the best results. 

Such experiences must come naturally. The great 
director is a born artist. The born artist is a natural 
vagabond and nine-hundred and ninety-nine people of 
a thousand are not natural vagabonds. 

After this fundamental requisite of experience come 
a dozen other assets that go to make the good director — 
the great director. The ability to handle people, to 
be a master of men, the knack of "visualization," to 

18 



THE GREAT AND THE LESS GREAT 

inject those little touches into a scene that perform the 
miraculous act of "getting under the skin," to achieve 
a proper and telling "atmosphere," etc., etc. These 
requisites will be dealt with in other chapters, some- 
times by the directors themselves. 

But no matter how important these other essentials 
loom it may be stated again that first of all EMO- 
TIONAL EXPERIENCE counts. 



Chapter II 
THE PICTURE SENSE 



ppVERY director who consist- 
ently derives a living from 
picture making has in more or 
less degree the power of visuali- 
zation. — Without it he would be 
unfit for his position. — The con- 
clusion that this ''power" is mere 
common sense applied to picture 
directing 



20 



Chapter II 

V All our directors are ^o) great. There would be 
no fun for the picture audiences if they were. Fans 
would be deprived of that greatest of all pleasures; 
writing to the magazines to point out that Marie 
wore silk stockings going in the door and lace filigreed 
hose coming out of it. But in the rank and file of 
directors whose work appears with regularity on the 
screen there are many capable and skilled men — each 
one, perhaps, merely waiting the chance or opportunity 
to step into the limelight with a pictorial masterpiece. 

Most of these directors are noted as "specialty men." 
One can do comedy-drama well, another excels at 
straight romance, a third has a particular turn for 
handling the intricacies of farce. These men are 
skilled artists but not great artists. Potentially great, 
perhaps, but the full extent of their emotional arcs has 
not as yet been tested. 

What then, a student of the screen has a perfect right 
to ask, determines the ability of these men? The an- 
swer is, that uncanny sixth sense necessary to become 
a director, "picture sense" or more technically, the 
power of visualization. 

The picture sense is latent in every embryo director. 
It can be developed, but no amount of study will ac- 
quire it. It seems to be born in some men just as a 
perfect tenor voice is born in some men. Study brings 
each out but cannot create either one. 

The "picture sense" is the art of seeing in the mind's 

21 



MOTION PICTURE D I R E C T I N G 

eye, or rather the mind's picture screen, every scene of 
the scenario writer's typewritten manuscript. Readers 
will probably recall that this accomplishment has also 
been set down as the scenario writer's fundamental 
groundwork of learning. Thus the writer and the 
director have much in common. And this is one reason 
why so many scenario writers have become successful 
directors. 

It may readily be seen that this picture sense, this 
ability of visualization, is constantly being used by the 
director. When he first reads his script he is visualiz- 
ing it every moment of the way. To himself he says, 
"Scene one will look like this, scene two will follow 
like this." He then conjures up before his eye what 
sort of a set he will work in, what properties it possesses, 
how his people will dress, where they will stand when 
they go through their emotions, how they will enter 
and exit from the scene, and a hundred and one other 
details. 

If, during this process of visualization, the story or 
one of its various scenes rings false, then the director 
is prepared to talk it over with the scenario writer and 
see what can be done to set it right. 

So right here it may be divined that a director with 
this sense of visualization developed to the utmost is 
a most valuable asset to any producing company. If, 
on the contrary, he has to wait until he sees a scene 
actually screened before he can detect its flaws and, 
seeing them, prepare to take it all over again, the waste 
time runs into money lost. 

Thus a director with a proper sense of visualization 

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THE PICTURE SENSE 

is not prepared to "shoot" until he has determined that 
each scene will screen realistically to the best of hii 
knowledge. 

All this may sound perfectly easy to those unac- 
quainted with the inside of a motion picture studio. 
It might be surmised that to detect unrealities in a 
manuscript is merely a matter of common sense. 

But it is remarkable indeed to take notice of the 
many men, true artists in their particular lines and 
certainly possessed of a modicum ot common sense, 
who have experimented in the directorial field and who 
have failed because of this lack of picture sense, lack 
of the ability to visualize. 

One of the larger producing companies in the field 
today, which is constantly seeking new directorial 
talent, a company that is actually willing to pay intel- 
ligent men to learn the craft of directing, recently 
induced an author of national reputation to join its 
scenario department with a view of later becoming a 
director after he had become fully acquainted with the 
construction of manuscripts. 

This man never had a chance at directing because 
he never made good in the scenario department. He 
didn't, couldn't visualize. And as said "picture sense" 
is required every bit as much by the scenario writer 
as it is by the director. 

Whereas, this highly talented individual failed in 
mastering the picture craft, another man, a man who 
had never written a line in his life, was given a mega- 
phone and told to go out and "shoot" a picture. This 
man was a cameraman, had worked on a hundred 

25 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

pictures and, having the power to visualize, had de- 
veloped it to a remarkable degree. The results he 
achieved with his first picture have earned him a posi- 
tion with the producing company as long as he wants it. 

The difference between these two "rookies" was just 
that difference of ''picture sense." On the one hand was 
a man with the inborn power of visualization, on the 
other hand a man with a total lack of it. The difference 
between success and failure. 

Because of these conclusions it might be pointed out 
that picture sense is a greater asset in the production of 
pictures than a general experience in human emotions. 
The argument might stand if it were not for the fact 
that the cameraman-director is not as yet great. Indeed, 
he is several degrees below the heights reached by the 
creme de la creme of the craft. As yet he has only 
attempted light romance on the screen, the easiest sort 
of picture to produce and to produce well as has been 
pointed out. As yet his real emotional gamut has not 
been brought into play. It is an unknown quantity. 
When it becomes known we may determine the degree 
of the director's greatness. 

Every studio has its stories regarding the amusing 
predicaments in which a director would have found 
himself had he not previously taken stock of the situ- 
ation and summoned his power of visualization to his 
assistance. 

It might be well to cite a simple case in point to 
thoroughly bring out the value of this ability. 

For instance, a director came upon the following 

sequence of scenes in a scenario he was scheduled to 

produce : 

26 



THE PICTURE SENSE 

Scene 45 — Interior Ballroom. Full Shot 

Host and hostess stand at door in f.g. receiving late guests. 
General dancing and ad lib activity in b.g. Run for a few feet 
and then bring in Mary escorted by John. They exchange greetings 
with host and hostess. 
Scene 46 — Interior Ballroom. Semi-Closeup 

Richard sees Mary enter and starts off toward her. 
Scene 47 — Interior. Medium Shot 

Mary turns from greeting host and hostess while John Is still 
talking with them. Richard enters and confronts Mary. He speaks 
hotly. ! . ; :;i 

Spoken Title' 

"You dare to come here, now that I've found you out?" 
Scene 48 — Interior Ballroom. Closeshot 

Richard and Mary. Richard completes title. She looks at him 
with scorn. He rages on a few moments and then exists. 
Scene 49 — Interior Ballroom. Full Shot 

Mary turns to John who leaves host and hostess, and the 
couple make their way across the dance floor. 

This, of course, is but a section of a script. More- 
over, it is as technically perfect as anyone could desire. 
And yet here the scenario writer has Richard denounc- 
ing Mary in a closeshot, denouncing her quite savagely, 
and right on top of this, in the next scene, she is 
walking serenely on with her partner, neither he nor 
any of the others in the crowded room having noticed 
the previous scene. 

This, of course, is an exceedingly obvious instance 
of how the ability to visualize comes to the director's 
aid. Yet there are many more subtle errors and super- 
ficially more realistic, that are ever lurking in a manu- 
script, lurking so securely as to sometimes escape notice. 

You may choose to say again, "Tush, the scenario 
writer lacked common sense when he wrote the above 
sequence of scenes." 

27 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

And so he did. After all, common sense when ap- 
plied to the art of directing is none other than "picture 
sense," the power of visualization. And so we arrive 
back at the beginning of the chapter. 



28 



Chapter III 

PREPARATION FOR 
PRODUCTION 

^HE routine attached to a 
director's task before he he- 
gins actual production, — Also 
some instances of stellar temper- 
ament, which, though mildly 
amusing in their relation, are 
something akin to tragedy in 
their enactment 



29 



Chapter III 

Before going further into the requirements of actual 
directing and the methods employed by certain direc- 
tors, the various processes through which a scenario 
goes before the actual work of production starts, can 
be noted with benefit. 

The scenario writer finishes his manuscript and the 
director goes into retirement for a day or two to study 
it and to put it through the test of visualization. 

In the meantime other copies of the manuscript have 
been placed with the various departments of production 
of the studio. 

The production department receives a copy. It is 
the duty of this department, first of all, to estimate the 
cost of the picture. So a "scene plot" is made. This 
consists of the description of each interior "setting" 
and exterior "location" called for in the story. A list 
is made as follows: 

Interiors 
Ball room 
Kitchen 
Living room 
Cafe 
Etc., etc. 

Exteriors 
Waterfalls 
Open road 
Large field 
Etc., etc. 

30 



PREPARATION FOR PRODUCTION 



After the description of each interior and exterior 
are placed the numbers representing the manuscript 
scenes that are played in each interior and exterior. 

The cost of production is then estimated. The pro- 
duction manager, the head of the studio, a man who 
strives to combine the ability of a business man with 
the feeling of an artist, perhaps sees a way whereby 
the kitchen scenes can be transferred to the living room. 
This will eliminate the cost of erecting the kitchen 
setting. 

Details such as this attended to, he will then give 
orders to the art and property departments to start on 
erecting the first setting. This is usually the one in 
which the greatest number of scenes are enacted. 

The art department makes plans for the setting. 
When these are passed they are given to the boss car- 
penter who sets his men at work on the actual prepara- 
tion of the set. 

When they have finished the art department in con- 
junction with the property and drapery departments 
"dress" the set. This is the working of fixing it up and 
making it look like the real thing. 

In the meantime the picture is being cast. Probably 
the star and leading man are already chosen. Then the 
casting director makes the list of all the actors, act- 
resses and "extras" needed in the production of the 
picture. 

He refers to his files and calls upon the people he 
needs, either upon those in the stock company which 
most studios of size maintain, or from the numerous 
agencies who manage the players. 

31 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

His selections are then submitted to the director 
and the production manager for O. K. 

In the meantime the location department has se- 
cured a list of the exterior scenes required by the 
picture. The location man refers to his files containing 
pictures of every likely location within a reasonable 
distance of the studio. He must find waterfalls, open 
road and a large field. 

He selects these locations, being sure that the phy- 
sical action of the story can be played in those he selects 
and then submits them to the director. If the director 
has a reason for not liking any of them, the location 
man must jump into his automobile and tour the coun- 
tryside for suitable substitutes to his first selections. 

All rather hard and serious work. 

Then the director starts to work. The production 
department must watch him and have the next setting 
ready for him on time so that not a day will be wasted. 
If more than one or two companies are working in 
the studio there may not be room to erect the next 
setting. Then, perhaps, if weather permits, the director 
goes out on location. 

Thus he is obliged to jump from one place in the 
story to another. He may be shooting scenes in the 
last part of the picture on one day and scenes in the 
first part a few days later. 

All this is the routine work that must be gone through 
with the production of each picture. 

Then the temperament of the actors and actresses 
comes in — comes in very strongly for that matter. If 

32 




TRUE AND PENETRATING CHARACTERIZATION "FEATURES WIN 
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"THE LOST KOMANLE," A PICTURE DIRECTED BY WILLIAM 
DE MILLE, BEARS THE SAME TRUE RELATION TO THE 
UPPER CRUST OF THE SOCIAL PIE AS "MISS 
LI LU RETT" :)OES TO THE MIDDLE P.vX. 



PREPARATION FOR PRODUCTION 

the director be working with a female star she may 
complain as to her leading man. 

''What's the matter with him?" the director will 
ask. "Can't he act?" 

"Yes, but he is not quite tall enough," answers the 
star, "why can't I have So-and-So-from my last pic- 
ture?" 

"Well, So-and-So is busy on another picture just now, 
sorry," answers the director. 

"I won't work without him," this from the star. 

Of course she will work without him. She has to. 
The director knows this. So does she. But he has to 
handle her diplomatically, to say the least. 

He would like to come out and say: "You will work 
with any leading man they give us." But he doesn't. 
He knows the temperament of the feminine star. 

/He summons all his reserve to his rescue and speaks 
to the lady in cooing words. He brushes her ruffled 
fur the right way. Exasperated husbands might take 
a fine example from him. 

After a few minutes talk he has succeeded in con- 
vincing the lady that Such-and-Such has So-and-So 
beaten eighty ways as to general ability, furthermore, 
his contrasting complexion shows her off to much better 
advantage. 

The^ the star, thoroughly convinced, cheers the 
director up with such an answer as : "Oh, all right, if 
you insist, but I did want So-and-So." 

She wouldn't dream of giving in and showing the 
director he was right. The director doesn't get such 
satisfaction. But if he's wise he doesn't bother about it, 

35 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

And so the work of production can go on. One day 
while the director is working in the cafe setting, which 
may be erected to represent a Parisian cafe an extra 
will come up to him and tell him that it is all wrong. 

"Because," he will say, "I've been in a cafe in Paris." 

"Well, were you in all the cafes of Paris?," the di- 
rector will politely ask. 

"No, but this one didn't have — " 

"Back to your place then, please," answers the di- 
rector if he maintains his diplomacy and poise and 
retains his anger. 

Another extra will have too much makeup on. The 
director must know how makeup photographs, what 
its efiPects are with people of various complexions and 
under certain lights. 

The extra will resent being sent back to the dressing 
room and told to alter his face. It is a reflection on his 
ability. Another case where diplomacy is demanded. 

And so finally the director gets everything working 
smoothly. He gains the confidence of the star and 
the leading man. He shows the extras that he knows 
his business and is perfectly able to look out for it, 
without their assistance. 

The only trouble is that just about at this point 
the director has finished the picture. 



36 



Chapter IV 

THE METHOD OF 
WILLIAM DE MILLE 

pACTS regarding the manner 
in which the majority of pic- 
tures are made. — The new order 
of producing pictures ''in con- 
tinuity" with some interesting 
remarks on the subject from 
William C. De Mille, director 
of ''Lulu Bett" and "The Lost 
Romance." 



37 



Chapter IV 

One of the most highly publicized tasks which fall 
to the lot of the director, highly publicized be- 
cause of its mere freakishness, is the routine which 
decrees that he must often begin "shooting" his picture 
in the middle or at the end of his story, or at any inter- 
mediate point except the very first scene. Press agents 
delight in harping on this fact, calling attention to the 
mental agility of the director in being able to jump 
from love scene to angry outburst, omitting intervening 
action in the jump and coming back to it at a later 
date. 

This is due to the fact, as has just been stated, that 
all scenes taking place in the same set or exterior lo- 
cation must, for economy's and convenience's sake, be 
photographed at once or rather successively. 

The "scene plot," compiled by the production de- 
partment, lists the number of interior settings and ex- 
terior locations required by the picture and after the 
description of each scene in the scene plot a row of 
numbers, each indicating a separate scene to be played 
in the set or location, follows. Thus a section of a scene 
plot may read: 

LIVING ROOM: Scenes 19, 20, 21, 81, 82, 83, 84, 
85, 159, 160, etc. 

DINING ROOM: Scenes 1, 2, 3, 4, 48, 49, 50, 51, 
52, 53, 54, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 291, 292, 293, etc. 

Of all the settings required let it be said that the 
living room contains the majority of the action to be 

38 



THE METHOD OF WILLIAM DE MILLE 

photographed. In all likelihood, then, this set is the 
first one to be erected by the studio production de- 
partment and as a result the director begins his first 
days work with scene No. 19 and follows it with scenes 
No. 20 and No. 21, which disclose closely related 
action. 

Let us say that these early scenes have to do with the 
first happy days of a young married couple. They dis- 
cover the little joys and hardships of housekeeping, etc. 
Well and good. But immediately after producing these 
scenes the director is forced to jump ahead to the 
sequence beginning with scene No. 81. Here is a point 
considerably further advanced in the story and so the 
director is obliged to mentally leap the action inter- 
vening between his first sequence and his second. 
Whereas Mary and John may have been perfectly con- 
tented in scene No. 19, they may have grown two years 
older and separated altogether in scene No. 81. Inas- 
much as he "shoots" No. 81 immediately after No. 21 
it must be seen that the director is obliged to adapt his 
own mood to this peculiar state of affairs created by 
the ramifications of studio organization. He must live 
two years in half an hour or less. Such procedure 
requires mental gymnastics that are more difficult than 
the act of the vaudeville contortionist. 

It is needless to add that this jumping hither and 
thither and back to hither again, requires a minutely 
adjusted sense of continuity on the director's part. To 
keep his whole story and the comparative values of 
certain sequences straight in his mind, is no easy matter. 
Further complications enter when it is realized that 

39 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

a sequence of exterior scenes may follow immediately 
after a sequence of interior scenes, these exteriors being 
closely identified with the interiors and requiring the 
same mood. But yet again the plan of work mapped 
out by the production department may postpone these 
scenes to the very last day of work. Thus the director is 
forced to jump back into the early mood of his story 
after he has rehearsed himself and become thoroughly 
satiated with all the other moods, a task imposing seem- 
ingly insurmountable difficulties. 

Time was when it used to be the boast of some di- 
rectors that they could produce a picture in this jump- 
ing about fashion just as well as if they had been 
permitted to "shoot" their stories in actual continuity. 
The method is still followed but the boasts aren't as 
audible. 

This method of production gave a fine opening to 
those critics who cried out that the motion pictures 
would always remain in the cheap state so well de- 
scribed in the word "movie." Really artistic results 
could never be secured with this eternal jumping from 
4 to 11 to 44, they said. They added, quite rightly 
too, that a consistent, well developed, psychologically 
ascending character was impossible of achievement 
under this plan. Inasmuch as actors often had to play 
their climaxes first and then go back and play a scene 
that led up to the climax, there was considerable point 
to the arguments of the critics. 

A very few directors have now managed to arrange 
their work so that they can actually make their pictures 
in continuity, beginning with scene No. 1 and proceed- 

40 



THE METHOD OF WILLIAM DE MILLE 

ing straight through, with but slight deviations, to the 
end. 

Among these directors and leading them all in re- 
sults attained, stands William C. De Mille, a director 
responsible for such artistic successes as "The Prince 
Chap" and "Conrad in Quest of His Youth," both with 
Thomas Meighan, and "The Lost Romance" and 
"Miss Lulu Bett," with casts very nearly approaching 
the all-star state. 

Mr. De Mille specializes in stories containing the 
true and dramatic psychological development of char- 
acter. The artificial melodramatics and blatant heroics 
he subdues to unnoticeable effect or more often elimi- 
nates entirely. His arc of emotional experience is filled, 
it is more than obvious, with all the sensitive lines 
imaginable. In fact Mr. De Mille is one of the few 
artistic directors in the field today, though perhaps his 
name has not been as highly publicized as have those 
of lesser lights. 

Mr. De Mille states that both he and his brother, 
Cecil, produce their pictures in actual continuity. 
"With such pictures as those in which I specialize," 
he says, "and by this specialty I mean of course pic- 
tures such as "Miss Lulu Bett" and "The Lost Ro- 
mance," pictures that depend considerably for their 
value on the consistent and progressive development of 
character, rather than mere physical action, producing 
in continuity is tremendously effective as well as a great 
help." 

"To jump about in character studies of this type 
would be exceedingly difficult for both players and 

41 



MOTION PICTURE DIRE C T I N G 

director and in many cases, suitable results would not 
be obtained." 

Let it be inserted here that other directors may scoff 
at the De Mille idea, but it may also be noted by 
students of the screen that no other director has 
achieved the highly artistic results in this line of pic- 
tures that stand to the credit of William De Mille. 

Let him continue: "The method of starting with 
scene No. 1 and proceeding numerically to the con- 
clusion of the picture is of benefit to both players and 
director. The players characterizations become well 
sustained, they take a greater interest in their work as 
they realize it growing consistently with each day's 
effort. And the director is able to get a better slant on 
his story as he watches the whole thing grow and take 
definite shape from day to day." 

Those who ask for proof need only look at one of 
the four pictures mentioned above that Mr. De Mille 
produced. "The Lost Romance" contained four of the 
most real characters ever developed on the screen. As 
for the two pictures in which Thomas Meighan ap- 
peared it is safe to say that his work in them far sur- 
passed anything else he has done before or since with 
the exception of "The Miracle Man." And the basic 
success of these two Meighan pictures was in each 
case, the characterization rendered by the star. This 
characterization might have been achieved by other 
methods but it is doubtful. Certainly De Mille's 
method has proven itself. 

The production of a picture after this method neces- 
sitates a carefully prepared manuscript, for once again, 

42 




WILLIAM DE MILLE USING THE MAGNA-VOX, AN ELECTRICAL 
IMPROVEMENT ON THE MEGAPHONE, WHICH CARRIES 
HIS VOICE DIRECTLY ONTO THE "SET" AND 
INTO THE EARS OF HIS PLAYERS 



THE METHOD OF WILLIAM DE MILLE 

the efficiency demanded by studio organization enters 

into the scheme of things. "Naturally the continuity 

writer must take particular care in building scripts 

for me," Mr. De Mille continues, "for it may be seen 

that this arrangement of production calls for an equally 

careful arrangement of the different settings employed 

in the picture. The studio seldom permits a director to 

keep more than three or four settings standing at once 

for any considerable length of time. So it must be 

arranged that the early action of the picture takes 

place in the first three or four settings erected. In 

other words, the settings of the production must be 

progressive as well as the characterizations. It is a 

little mechanical trick that is much easier to utilize 

than it is to explain." 

It may be added that Mr. De Mille himself works 
with his writers on their scenarios and supervises all 
such details as this matter of mechanics as well as the 
more important matters that come under the head of 
scenario writing. 

To make his method easier Mr. De Mille has 
evolved still another production trick which is inter- 
esting to say the least. Many directors after they have 
photographed a full scene are obliged to lose valuable 
time in moving the camera and lights up to the prin- 
cipal players in order to take closeups. This time may 
also account for the loss of the proper mood on the part 
of the director and his players. 

To eliminate this unsatisfactory condition, Mr. De 
Mille has his settings built so that he can photograph 
them from different angles and from different distances 

45 



MOTION PICTURE P I R E C T I N G 

at the same time. So his players while acting one long 
scene are actually photographed in full shots, semi- 
closeups and closeups. The closeups cameras are 
"blinded" behind convenient pieces of scenery. 

This step of producing pictures in continuity is a big 
one and one in the right direction. Pictures are not 
perfect in this day by any manner of means but when 
a point is reached when all those that demand to be so 
treated can be produced in continuity, the results will 
doubtless be obviously better. 

Naturally, however, this method would not apply 
to the director working on the "action" picture such as 
that in which William S. Hart and Tom Mix appear. 
In such cases where physical action and thrills are set 
at a premium, it would be useless and an entire waste 
of time to insist on producing in continuity. Imagine 
calling "Halt!" on a long shot of advancing train 
robbers while the cameraman moved up and took a 
closeup of the bad man's finger pulling the trigger I 
And then moving back again and permitting the train 
robbers to proceed. 

Such a procedure would be as foolish as to attempt 
to produce one of De Mille's works in the old fashioned 
way. 



46 



Chapter V 

^ CECIL DE MILLE 
ALSO SPEAKS 

TN which it is noted that the 
more famous De Mille, be- 
sides employing the method of 
production described by his 
brother, places unusual faith in 
the intelligence of his actors and 
actresses. — ** Never show them 
HOW but tell them WHAT" 
is his formula. — A case where an 
actor insisted on being shown 



47 



Chapter V 

Mention of one of the De Milles immediately brings 
to mind the other. Cecil and William are as easy to 
say in one breath as Anthony and Cleopatra, Nip and 
Tuck and Mutt and Jeff. 

Cecil B. De Mille is one of the few directors of 
today whose name carries a picture to the financial 
success that greets a picture bearing the name of a 
great star. It appears that he first rode to national 
fame when he inaugurated a series of pictures bearing 
such mandatory and interrogatory titles as "Don't 
Change Your Husband" and "Why Change Your 
Wife?" 

But long before this he was cutting wide swaths in 
the old fashioned method of directing by doing his 
work in a distinctly individual and better way. Pic- 
tures such as "The Golden Chance" and the first edi- 
tion of "The Squaw Man" stamped him as considerably 
more of an artist than the earlier pioneers in the art 
of directing. 

Cecil De Mille was, perhaps, the first director to 
use the method of producing his pictures in continuity, 
as outlined by his brother in the previous chapter. 
Perhaps this is the reason that he early secured such 
superior results to those achieved by the general run 
of directors in the early days. 

Or perhaps on the other hand it is his ability to 
handle actors and actresses so as to get the very utmost 
from their efforts. For Mr. De Mille claims that one 

48 



CECIL DE MILLE ALSO SPEAKS 



of the primal rules of directing is "never tell an actor 
how to play a scene." 

On this axiom, he states, lies the secret of achieving 
real characterization and absolute naturalness on the 
screen. 

This may appear to be a perfectly natural conclusion 
to some readers. An actor of ability knows his business 
and therefore knows how to develop a true character- 
ization. All he needs is a few words from the director 
as regards the timing of his transition from one emotion 
to another. 

This is becoming more and more true as the art of 
picture production develops but the time is easily re- 
called when directors boasted that they acted out every 
part of the picture so that their casts might secure the 
proper grasp of the story. 

I remember very well one director, a big man in his 
day but who has since sunk to oblivion as far as picture 
production goes, who used to take great delight in 
showing his players how to play certain scenes. 

After a few preliminary rehearsals he would become 
disgusted, or pretend to become disgusted, with the 
efforts of his cast and thereupon he would act out each 
and every role for the cast's benefit. It was rather 
ridiculous to see him affecting the coy mannerisms of 
an ingenue, then jumping quickly into the role of the 
hero and from there to the contrasting part of the vil- 
lain. He would even perform the butler with pompous 
dignity for the benefit of the extra who was playing 
the part. ' :* ^' 1 

But what effect did all this play on the director's 

49 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

part have on the onlooking cast? The director's per- 
sonality and individual mannerisms were displayed in 
every role. Thereafter the actors endeavored to imitate 
him not to enact their parts. The hero merely gave an 
imitation of the director giving an imitation of the 
hero. The ingenue gave an imitation of the director 
imitating the ingenue. And so on through all the parts. 

The results, it need hardly be pointed out, were not 
natural. In the end all the players gave bad imitations 
of the director. On top of this they endeavored to 
effect his mannerism and tricks of expression. As a 
consequence there was absolutely nothing distinctive 
about the completed picture. It was the director's and 
no one else's. The director, being conceited to a great 
degree, was naturally delighted with the result. But 
he was the only one delighted with it as is testified by 
the fact that he is not in the art today. 

This method has gradually been forced out of the 
studio. There are few directors who insist on acting 
every part out nowadays. There are some left but not 
many. A few more years and they will all disappear 
and then we will have still better pictures. 

Mr. De Mille evidently believes that a good many 
directors of the present day still adhere to the old 
fashioned method. It is to be hoped that he isn't alto- 
gether right. 

"Too many directors," he says, "consider it their duty 
to show an actor just how to play every scene in the 
picture. This type of director insists on acting out 
every role and demands that his cast shall mimic his 

50 



CECIL DE MILLE ALSO SPEAKS 



action before the camera. The results are woefully 
wooden, unnatural and characterless. 

"In the perfect photoplay each character must be 
distinctly itself. It must be sharply differentiated from 
all other characters in that particular play. This result 
can only be achieved by permitting each actor or actress 
to work out his or her own interpretation of a role. 

"If I show an actor how to pick up a paper or a book 
in a scene he will consciously strive to imitate my ac- 
tions. Now, what may be perfectly natural for me 
may be unnatural and awkward for him. At the best 
his attempt to copy my model will be but a poor re- 
production of Cecil B. De Mille on the screen. If I 
carried that program through with respect to each 
player I would have just as many weak versions of 
Cecil B. De Mille as there are characters in the play. 

"If, on the other hand, I explain to the actor what 
the action of the scene is and what idea or emotion I 
want him to convey to the spectator and then permit 
him to work out his own interpretation of the scene I 
have a distinctive, natural and far more powerful piece 
of work from that actor. I assume that every actor is 
better at creating than mimicing me. 

"My task comes in in my effort to perfect his inter- 
pretation by helpful criticism and suggestion but not 
by example. 

"Before beginning actual production on a picture I 
make it a rule to call together the entire cast and the 
technical staff. At this meeting I tell them the story 
with all the detail of characterization and atmosphere 
that I am capable of putting into it. I do not read 

51 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

them the continuity scene by scene. I try to make them 
see and feel the story and the characters and, as every- 
one in the production art knows, the straight reading 
of a continuity is an uninteresting and tedious proposi- 
tion. 

"So when the cameras actually start to turn, each 
member of the cast has his or her own characterization 
and its relationship to the others well in mind. 

"At the beginning of e^ch scene I sketch out verbally 
what the action of the scene is to convey to picture 
audiences. Then comes a rehearsal and often many 
rehearsals before it is actually filmed. But through 
all these rehearsals I make a point of never showing 
anyone how to do a thing. If an actor does something 
badly or awkwardly I try to locate the cause of the 
awkwardness and remedy that. By way of example 
the scene may call for an actor to be seated at a desk 
thoughtfully smoking a pipe. Perhaps the actor may 
handle the pipe like an amateur. Inquiry may uncover 
the fact that he is far more at home smoking a cigar. 
Thereupon the cigar is supplied and the scene proceeds 
smoothly. 

"A little thing, to be sure, but between the pipe and 
the cigar lies the difference between a natural and an 
unnatural performance. 

"No actor worthy of his calling should have to be 
shown how to play a scene. He may have to be coached ; 
that is part of the director's task. But it is no part of 
the director's duties to furnish the acting model for 
any or every character in the play. I firmly believe that 

empts on the part of the directors to show actors how 

52 




Melbourne Spurr 



CECIL B. DE MILLE 




« 



< 






a 
c 

pa 



CECIL DE MILLE ALSO SPEAKS 



to do certain things will inevitably result in bad per- 
formances and consequent damage to the quality of 
the finished production." 

Mr. De Mille's comments are very interesting. It 
is to be supposed that he does not give copies of the 
picture continuity to his players that they may tho- 
roughly acquaint themselves with the parts they are 
to play before actual production work begins. Today 
the majority of directors like to do this. 

However, as Mr. De Mille says, ''I tell the story 
with all the detail of characterization and atmosphere 
that I am capable of putting into it." This appears to 
be an admirable course to pursue. Given the continuity 
an actor may get quite the wrong idea of the role he is 
to play. Listening to his director sketch the story, 
including in it his ideas as to its development, must of 
necessity give the actor a clear idea of his work and 
an idea more co-inciding with that of the director's. 
Thus it might appear that misunderstanding and argu- 
ment are well disposed of. 

On the other hand Mr. De Mille is fortunate in 
having players of general intelligence and ability to 
deal with. Look over any of the casts he has employed 
in his recent productions, "The Affairs of Anatol" for 
example, and you will discover that there is hardly an 
unknown in the entire cast. 

It is amusing to consider what Mr. De Mille would 
have done if he had had the task of producing "Cappy 
Ricks," a picture made by one of the directors that 
Mr. De Mille developed, Tom Forman. There was 

55 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

the role of a Swedish sea captain, humorously called 
"All-Hands-and-Feet" in this picture. 

An old prize fighter was selected to play the role. 
He looked the part to perfection. But the scenario 
called for the star, Thomas Meighan, to engage in a 
fight with him and knock him out. The ancient fighter 
was perfectly agreeable for the fight, in fact he battered 
his opponent considerably but when it came time for 
him to be knocked out he just wouldn't fall down. 

The scene was tried over and over again and each 
time when it came to the psychological moment "All- 
Hands-and-Feet" positively refused to fall down on 
the deck after Mr. Meighan had delivered a blow 
on the chin. 

"Go down I Down!" Mr. Forman kept repeating 
wrathfully. 

"Down? Down?" queried the one time prize fighter, 
"I no understand what you say." 

Eventually Mr. Forman had to submit to the igno- 
miny of allowing Mr. Meighan to land on his chin 
and drop him on the deck. 

A broad grin crept over the benign countenance of 
"All-Hands-and-Feet" as he said, "Ah, I never bane 
knocked down, I see what you mean. I try to fall 
next time". 

Mr. Forman and Mr. Meighan started a movement 
to back "All-Hands-and-Feet" for the championship of 
the world. But when their subject heard of it he 
mysteriously disappeared. Possibly he didn't want to 
be taught what "down" meant in a serious way. 



56 



Chapter VI 

WHEN ACTING ABILITY 
HELPS 

^N amusing incident of studio 
life that might be seen by 
a visitor any day in the week 
with the moral ''Never be shock- 
ed by anything you see in a 
motion picture studio.'' 



\. 



57 



Chapter VI 

No better illustration of the value of Mr. De Milk's 
foregoing remarks can be found than in the case of 
Charles Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin as well as being the 
world's greatest comedian, also directs his pictures. 

Suppose that Mr. Chaplin decided to rehearse in 
every part of his picture so that his supporting players 
might pattern his performances after his. The com- 
pleted product would show : One good Charles Chaplin 
and a dozen bad imitations of Charles Chaplin. 

Mr. Chaplin has imitators enough without going 
to the trouble of bringing them right into his own 
pictures. 

Incidentally the task that confronts the actor-di- 
rector is extraordinarily difficult. He not only is 
obliged to face the lights in makeup and drop his own 
personality in the role he is playing but he must also 
be able to see his own work from behind the camera, 
to retain his perspective from this angle of the produc- 
tion as well as from the acting angle. 

His is thus a twice difficult task and perhaps for this 
reason there are few surviving actor-directors. In the 
old days there used to be loads of them but the pictures 
were then too much actor and not enough director. 

Besides Charles Chaplin only a few survive today, 
prominent among them being William S. Hart and 
Charles Ray and it may be said that each of these stars 
has done his best work when directed by someone else. 
When they essay the dual task of acting and directing 

58 



WHEN ACTING ABILITY HELPS 



they pay too little attention to the supervision of the 
entire production and concentrate too largely on their 
own performances. 

Despite this criticism of the actor-director and the cry 
against directors showing their players how to perform 
a scene no one can deny that a knowledge of acting, or 
rather a knowledge of how to act, comes in very handy 
from the director's point of view. 

A little over a year ago I happened to visit one of the 
large eastern studios when John S. Robertson, probably 
one of the most competent men in the production craft 
was working there. Mr. Robertson has years of acting 
on the stage behind him. He played in stock for a long 
period and knows every role in every play of im- 
portance produced over a period of considerable years. 

However Mr. Robertson is now a director and not an 
actor. What was my surprise then to discover him in 
the midst of a highly dramatic scene. The setting was 
the dressing room of a stage star. Mr. Robertson was 
half sitting, half reclining on a luxurious chaise-lounge. 
The atmosphere was fairly exotic. 

Marc McDermott, excellent character actor that he 
is, stood in the background, immaculately clad in eve- 
ning attire. He was gazing at Mr. Robertson with the 
glint of evil in his eyes. 

The door opened and in walked Reginald Denny 
who immediately rushed madly to the couch on which 
Mr. Robertson was reclining languidly and proceeded 
to make violent love to him. 

Naturally my first impulse was to make matters 
known to the Department of Health but on inquiry I 

59 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

soon learned that Mr. Robertson was merely playing 
Elsie Ferguson's role in the preliminary rehearsal of 
"Footlights." Miss Ferguson was a little late and Mr. 
Robertson was obliging for the benefit of Messrs. 
McDermott and Denny! 

So I watched them further. A long scene was enacted 
with Mr. Robertson playing Miss Ferguson's role 
exactly as the script called. And he was doing it as if 
it were the most natural thing in the world. As for the 
other participants they were so engrossed in their work 
that they didn't seem to notice the absence of Miss 
Ferguson and the presence of her capable substitute. 

When at last she did appear the scene only needed 
one brief rehearsal before the cameras started to grind. 

Besides pointing out the value of the ability to act 
to the director this little tale also points another moral, 
to wit, never be shocked at anything you see in a motion 
picture studio. 



60 



Chapter VII 

REX INGRAM ON 
"ATMOSPHERE" 

ctHE director of ''The Four 
Horsemen of the Apoca- 
lypse" and ''The Conquering 
Power," two of the screen's 
greatest achievements, has some- 
thing to say about settings and 
atmosphere. — Using impression- 
istic methods to realistic ends is 
his forte. — The effort demanded 
to achieve convincing realism, on 
the screen 



61 



CHAPTER VII 

Few people who closely follow the screen will need 
an introduction to Rex Ingram, the young director 
who startled the whole screen world with the artistry 
of his work in "The Four Horsemen of the Apoca- 
lypse." Mr. Ingram is one of those to whom the screen 
gave one of its biggest opportunities. For a long time 
before "The Four Horsemen" was completed the 
wiseacres were prowling about, shaking their beards 
and stating that the young director was running wild 
and breaking the producing company that was spon- 
soring the picture. 

How he startled the world with a magnificent piece 
of work is still recent screen history. And how he fol- 
lowed his first big success with another great picture, 
"The Conquering Power," is also still fresh in the 
minds of picture audiences. 

Among many others one thing distinguished both 
"The Four Horsemen" and "The Conquering Power" 
and that was the remarkable atmosphere which Mr. 
Ingram had managed to inject in both subjects. It was 
absolutely startling in its effect. Those who hadn't 
stopped to bother about Mr. Ingram's early studies 
which included art in two forms, painting and sculp- 
turing, didn't know how in the world he had managed 
it. However, it appears from Mr. Ingram's own words 
that he merely used common sense and applied the 
methods of the older arts to the craft of picture pro- 
duction. 

62 



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REX INGRA M ON "ATMOSPHERE" 

He has some very interesting things to say regarding 
the value of atmosphere in motion picture production. 

He writes : "After sincerity of characterization and 
directness in story-telling, atmosphere does more to- 
ward making an audience accept what it sees on the 
screen than anything else. By accept, I mean, be enter- 
tained, engrossed in the subject, 

"While good atmosphere gives an air of reality to 
a picture yet the most convincing and engrossing at- 
mosphere is often far from realistic. This is so because 
the aim of the director should be to get over the ejfect 
of the atmosphere he desires, rather than the actual 
atmosphere which exists in such scenes as he may wish 
to portray, and which, if reduced literally to the screen 
would be quite unconvincing." 

This principle of Mr. Ingram's is the ideal one on 
which to work. It is the principle of other arts 
beside that of producing motion pictures. It is the 
principle of creating something by implication and 
suggestion rather than actual reproduction. This, how- 
ever, detracts not one whit from the credit that is Mr. 
Ingram's for being the first director to apply it to pic- 
ture production in a consistent and effective way. 

Mr. Ingram continues: "Whether a scene is being 
made of a beach-comber's shanty, an underworld base- 
ment saloon, a pool-hall, a ship's cabin, a shoe factory 
or a smart restaurant, not only should the aim be to 
convince the audience, but enough study should be 
given the subject, in each case, to convince the habitues 
of any of these places that they are in familiar sur- 
roundings. 

65 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

"One of the most interesting sets that I have ever 
handled from an atmospheric standpoint was the in- 
terior of a derelict ship, beached, and become the 
hang-out of beach-combers, in "Under Crimson Skies," 
a production some years old. Conrad, the master writer 
of the sea, never offered a more wonderful opportunity 
for color than did this episode in the story provided 
by J. G. Hawks, with its thrilling climax in the battle 
in the surf between the white man and the black giant. 

"In 'The Four Horsemen,' the basement resort of 
the Buenos Aires bocca, or river front hang-out, fur- 
nished plenty of chances to make colorful pictures — 
yet had I been literal in the way I handled it the effect 
would not have been anything nearly as realistic. For 
I doubt if anything just like that dive ever existed in 
the Argentine or anywhere else for that matter. 

"The set was a Spanish version of a bowery cellar 
saloon that I used in a picture which I made several 
years before and re-created to suit the episode suggested 
in the great Ibanez novel. The signs on the wall, the 
types of men, in fact all the bits of atmosphere in the 
place were the results of painstaking efforts to get 
"color" and local atmosphere into the set. In one 
corner a sign hung which was the advertisement of a 
notorious 'crimp,' a sailor's boarding-house keeper, 
whose establishment was on the bocca for years. An 
old sailor who was working in the scene and who had 
lived in Buenos Aires came to me and said : 'I've been 
shanghaied by that blood-sucker.' 

"I have gone so far as to have my principals speak 
the language of the country in which the picture is 

66 



REX INGRAM ON "ATMOSPHERE' 



laid. Few of them like to go to this trouble but it helps 
them materially in keeping in the required atmosphere. 
The results on the screen are so encouraging that after 
they see what it has done for them the players don't 
mind the extra study that this course entails. 

"I know of no branch of a director's job that is more 
fascinating than getting color and atmosphere into the 
settings — thinking out bits of 'business,' little flashes 
of life which, though only on the screen for a few 
moments, can give an air of reality to an entire sequence 
of scenes, that would perhaps otherwise be lacking.^ 

"In screening Balzac, as I did in making 'The 
Conquering Power,' fine atmosphere and character- 
ization are of more vital importance than incident, 
for nine times out of ten it is the characters in a great j 
novel that we remember — rather than the plot." ] 

Mr. Ingram is going on his way, creating distinctly 
unusual pictures and one of the chief reasons is this 
great attention that he pays to atmosphere by suggestion 
rather than actual reproduction. Novelists call atmos- 
phere "background." The terms are the same. The 
novelist creates his background, his atmosphere, by 
painting pictures with words, suggesting the locale 
and environment of history. Thus with Mr. Ingram. 
He suggests scenes in his pictures and refuses to label 
them. In this respect he is farther advanced than most 
any director in the art today. 

This idea of suggestion can easily be carried too 
far, however. The German producer who turned out 
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" carried it to the point 
of alleged futuristic "art." He aimed to suggest but 

67 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

instead he puzzled completely. The producer of "The 
Golem," another German picture, came nearer the 
point. But it appears that neither of them equalled 
or much less surpassed the work of Mr. Ingram in his 
two fine productions already mentioned. 

Mr. Ingram is one of the very few new directors 
that the screen has developed in recent years. New in 
the sense that he has attracted attention not only within 
the art of picture production but without it as well. 
He is one of those men who have been recruited from 
other fields of endeavor and who has fulfilled expecta- 
tions and gone far beyond them. A man such as Ingram 
will always have an opportunity. He may have to fight 
for it but it's bound to come. 

Mr. Ingram's remarks about building settings, so that 
people who frequent such places in real life will in- 
stantly recognize them, opens an interesting field of 
comment. Even if a director labors painstakingly to 
achieve the proper atmosphere there are always some 
crabs in the audience who are bound to take exception. 
If they can't find something to criticise in the setting 
they criticise the way the extras play their parts. 

For a long time doctors have been grossly misrepre- 
sented on the screen. Doctors in particular have ob- 
jected that they never act as if possessed of diplomas. 
A director recently resolved to put an end to such 
criticism. It annoyed him particularly inasmuch as he 
had a friend, an M.D., who was forever poking fun at 
him whenever he introduced a man of medicine into 
a picture. 

68 



REX INGRAM ON "ATMOSPHERE" 



When the director in question completed his latest 
picture he took his doctor friend to see it and after it 
was over asked him specially how he liked the per- 
formance of the actor who played the doctor. 

"Terrible," replied his friend, "The man never saw 
a clinic and shows it. No real doctor would act like 
that." 

"That's funny," replied the director with a smile, 
"because, you see he wasn't an actor but — a doctor!" 



69 



Chapter VIII 

MAINLY ABOUT 
D. W. GRIFFITH 

^n^HE producer and director of 
''The Birth of a Nation," 
''Hearts of the World," "Way 
Down East," and "Orphans of 
the Storm" works with amazing 
disregard of system. — Others at- 
tempt his methods of procedure 
and come more often to grief 
than to glory 



70 



Chapter VIII 

No volume on the subject of directing would be 
complete without the mention of D. W. Griffith. And 
yet it is utterly impossible to deal with D. W. Griffith 
in any comprehensive way. The producer of the first 
great picture "The Birth of a Nation," the man who 
strove for something beyond the times in "Intolerance," 
the artist who made "Hearts of the World" and the 
masterly technician who stands sponsor for "Way 
Down East," is singularly hard to approach from any 
ordinary viewpoint. 

There is no doubt that D. W. Griffith at intervals 
gives just cause to the commentators who place him at 
the top of the list of all directors. But at the same time 
he often does the most ordinary of things on the screen. 
In one picture he is an artist and in the next he appears 
in the light of a producer of hack pieces of motion 
picture film. 

The reason, no doubt, is that Mr. Griffith is a busi- 
ness man as well as an artist. He sinks an unusually 
large amount of money in a picture such as "Hearts of 
the World" and then realizes that, while the returns 
from such a subject are slowly accruing, he must needs 
turn out a few pot-boilers to keep the wolf from the 
door. Thus "Hearts of the World" was followed by 
two or three shorter and less pretentious war pictures 
of commonplace variety. 

Mr. Griffith is constantly exasperating people by 
such mixed proceedings and just when his long-suffer- 

71 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

ing public has decided to forsake him forever and turn 
to more consistent directors and producers, he startles 
the world again with another masterpiece. 

His latest picture, for instance, "Orphans of the 
Storm," has proven an artistic success from almost 
every viewpoint, and has been quite capable of dis- 
posing of the bad taste left in the collective mouths of 
critical audiences by his recent "Dream Street." 

One of the most interesting things about Mr. Griffith 
to the lay mind is that he never uses the usual continuity 
that the majority of directors employ. He has his story 
clearly in his mind before he starts work. He has some- 
thing of a subconscious realization of how many dif- 
ferent scenes ought to be embraced in each episode 
and he sets about his work accordingly. 

This might not seem so difficult as it really is if Mr. 
Griffith employed the De Mille method of directing 
his pictures in continuity, beginning with scene No. 1 
and proceeding numerically onward. But Mr. Griffith 
sails right along using one setting or scene after another 
without much regard for continuity. He takes the 
number of shots required in each setting and scene with 
but slight assistance from notes and memoranda. 

He works in the following order : A scene may rep- 
resent a room in a country home. A son is saying 
goodbye to his mother; he is either going away to war 
or going to the city to make good. There is, of course, 
a tearful parting. Now the average director will refer 
to his script and note that the scenario writer has 
given him, say, twelve different shots, including close- 

72 




D. W. GRIFFITH 



MAINLY ABOUT D. W . GRIFFITH 

ups, long shots and semi-closeups in which to get the 
"goodbye" scene over and done with. 

Mr. Griffith, on the other hand, will refer to no 
'script of any kind, he will merely go about talking the 
sequence of scenes as they occur on the screen. There 
may be first a tearful closeup of the mother, then a close- 
up of the boy, nervous, happy, sad. Then a shot of both 
of them embracing and the son pulling away. Then a 
wider shot showing the son about to make his exit, but 
turning and coming back to say a last farewell to the 
mother. And so on and so forth. The action itself will 
suggest other scenes to Mr. Griffith. 

Of course there are many other directors who work 
in the same way in some respects. Such a simple se- 
quence as related above can be accomplished by any 
director without recourse to an elaborate continuity. 
But the majority of directors, even though they don't 
refer to a continuity minutely with respect to such 
sequences, have one handy so that they can refer to it 
in times when the complications of the story begin to 
pile up. 

To draw a clearer parallel, the usual director is like 
a motorist who has carefully studied his road map 
before setting out on a journey and who refers to it 
time and again during the trip, specially when he 
comes to a cross roads. Mr. Griffith never studies a 
road map. He just jumps into his car and starts going. 
When he comes to a crossing he takes the road that 
seems the best to him. Sometimes this road is the wrong 
one. More often it is right. But at least Mr. Griffith 
has had the fun of exploring without really knowing 

75 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

what is coming next. As a consequence, his experi- 
ences even though at times poor with respect to picture 
technique, are never tedious but always refreshing. 

Mr. Griffith explains his aversions to a cut-and-dried 
continuity by saying that he doesn't want other people 
to think out his story for him. Rather he prefers to 
think it out himself. He believes that the man who 
works directly from a continuity is merely carrying 
out the plans of the scenario writer. It doesn't take 
any great exertion, he believes, to successfully carry out 
these ideas if they are good ideas. On the other hand 
when he himself sets to work without a continuity he 
has the added joy of creating something as he goes 
along. He is not working from some other person's 
brain but from his own. 

Mr. Griffith's method of working has its advantages 
and, under certain circumstances, it would have its 
grave disadvantages. Mr. Griffith, being his own em- 
ployer, can take all the time he wishes on the making 
of his productions. A director working on a schedule 
that makes some consideration of time would be quite 
at a loss in working without a 'script. The chances 
are he would become hopelessly involved before he 
got halfway through and wonder what he was produc- 
ing. And this time schedule would not permit the 
director to sit down and puzzle himself out of his pre- 
dicament for hours and hours the way Mr. Griffith 
does. And then, even if it did permit him so to do, 
the chances are again that he might not come out of 
the predicament with all the loose ends of his story 
neatly assorted the way Mr. Griffith does. After all, 

76 



MAINLY ABOUT D. W. GRIFFITH 

there is only one Griffith and attempting to apply his 
methods to other directors is something like walking 
and walking around a block and wondering why you 
never get farther up town. 

Times were, in the days of the old Biograph and 
Fine Arts companies, that Mr. Griffith had a number 
of directors working under his supervision. A number 
of these men, notably Chet Withey, Edward Dillon 
and the Franklin brothers have made marks for them- 
selves with other companies, working somewhat on 
the Griffith method but usually with a continuity to 
guide them. 

I know of one director who worked with Mr. Griffith 
long ago and who is still boasting of his association 
with him (for working with D. W., you see, grants 
one as much prestige in the picture world as having 
an ancestor that came over on the Mayflower gives 
one in the social world), but who has not yet made a 
good picture since he left his former chief. 

Among other boasts this director includes the one 
that he never used a continuity when producing a 
picture. I happened to be up at his studio one day 
when he was involved in the production of a particul- 
arly difficult and heavy dramatic sequence of action. 
There were a number of players at work on a large 
setting and each one of them had an important part. 

This director worked along fairly smoothly up to a 
certain point and then suddenly stopped. He was lost. 
Didn't know what came next. But rather than admit it 
to his company he sat staring at them for fully half an 
hour, then proceeded to pace the studio floor in great 

77 



MOTION P ICTURE DIRECTING 

agitation "seeking for the missing idea." He then an- 
nounced that he would retire to his private office and 
think the matter over quietly. About five minutes later 
he emerged with all his ideas straightened out. Of 
course, to the gullible, his disappearing act had been 
the signal for a great inspiration but in reality, as I 
found out afterwards, he had gone into his office and 
referred to the continuity of the story which he had 
carefully secreted in his desk all the time. 

The director's vanity would never permit him to 
admit this in public. He chose to be regarded as an- 
other Griffith. Unhappily for him his completed pic- 
ture proved that he was far from another Griffith or 
even a second-rate one. Really Mr. Griffith has a lot 
to answer for in this matter. Either he or the vanity 
of the men who formerly worked with him has to be 
blamed. And as Mr. Griffith is a concrete object we 
might as well blame him. 

The realization has dawned on the writer that this 
chapter is totally inadequate in giving any description 
of Mr. Griffith, apart from the small information that 
he works without a manuscript. Such, however, seems 
doomed to be the case. One cannot dissect Mr. Griffith, 
take him apart and explain this piece and that. This 
because he is considerably an artist and no real artist 
can tell exactly how he works and give the processes 
by which he achieves certain effects. 

A painter will begin work on a fresh canvass by 
putting daubs of color here, there and everywhere. The 
layman doesn't know what in the deuce he is up to. 
But in the finished product these early daubs of color 

78 




D. W. GRIFFITH 



MAINLY ABOUT D. W. GRIFFITH 

count largely in the efifect created by the whole mass. 
Even the artist himself cannot explain concisely and 
clearly the why and wherefore of every daub he applied 
early in his creation. 

So it is with Mr. Griffith. He probably could not 
explain his method of working himself. He goes ahead 
on his creation, putting a stroke here and another there. 
The why and wherefore of them are things undefinable. 
Perhaps when his picture is finished he can give you 
the whys and wherefores but the chances are that he 
can't. He only knows that he has striven for something 
and either succeeded or failed in the achievement of 
his ambition. 

And so it is with other directors, after all is said 
and done. Some of the methods of other directors 
as set down earlier in these chapters are merely ideas, 
small gleanings; but in themselves alone they are no 
more responsible for the successes of these directors 
than are their names. 



81 



Chapter IX 

MOUNTAINS AND 
MOLEHILLS 

JJ/UYT>. W. Griffith has been 
more successful in produc- 
ing spectacular features than 
other directors. — His ability to 
step from the mountain to the 
molehill with agility and delica- 
cy. — The futility of mob scenes 
that mean mob scenes and no- 
thing more 



82 



Chapter IX 

The foregoing words on D. W. Griffith have brought 
to mind the matter of motion picture spectacles, those 
pictures telling a personal story before a background 
of masses of people and monstrous settings. There is 
small doubt but that the spectacle is the most difficult 
of all motion pictures to produce. Mr. Griffith has 
succeeded most often with such subjects, perhaps be- 
cause he has attempted them more often. Rex Ingram 
succeeded admirably well in "The Four Horsemen of 
the Apocalypse" and no doubt will succeed again when 
he tries further, as he most surely will. 

Many others have succeeded too, and many have 
failed, the chief reason for the failures being, it ap- 
pears, that the spectacle idea appealed to the director 
in capital letters while he forgot all about the personal 
element of the story. No spectacle, no matter how 
grand and glittering and gorgeous, no matter how 
heavily peopled with costumed supernumeraries, no 
matter how thickly smeared with money and elaborate 
"art" can succeed if the director forgets about his per- 
sonal story in the bigness of his background. He must 
be able to step from the mountain to the molehill with 
agility and with such delicacy of touch that he doesn't 
smash the molehill by treading on it as if it were the 
mountain. 

As an example of this appreciation of both the spec- 
tacular and personal elements of story, no better picture 
can be found than Mr. Griffith's "Hearts of the 

83 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

World," his story of the European war. He brought 
before the eye all the horrible realities of the battle 
field, used them to dramatic purpose time and again. 
And yet in the midst of all this spectacular action he 
never for once lost sight of the personal element in the 
story, this element represented on the battle field by 
Robert Harron who played the part of the young 
soldier. How many people who saw "Hearts of the 
World" can forget the scene in the shell hole in which 
the center of attention were the young soldier and the 
dying negro? This was one of the most remarkable of 
the personal, intimate touches in the picture and yet 
the very next moment the spectator was plunged back 
into the mass horror of the tremendous conflict. 

This was only an instance of many. In the last scenes 
which looked forward to the armistice parade in Paris 
(looked forward to it with an uncanny amount of 
judgment), soldiers and citizens were seen going mad 
with joy in the streets of the city. A thrilling sight in 
itself were these mass scenes, showing thousands of 
people nearly breaking their own and their friends' 
necks with unrestrained joy at peace come at last. 

But even in the midst of all these scenes of thrilling 
revelry the four principal characters of the picture 
were introduced rejoicing too. And the glimpses shown 
of them brought the thrills of -the big scenes to a tre- 
mendous emotional climax. 

It would seem a simple matter for the clear-thinking 
director to produce a spectacular picture at the same 
time keeping his finger on the pulse of the intimate, 
personal story that gives color and reality to the bigness 

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MOUNTAINS AND MOLEHILLS 



of his backgrounds. But it is more often the case than 
not that the director who tackles a spectacle forgets his 
story in the mad rush for sweeping eflfect. As a con- 
sequence he loses his grip on the interest of his 
audience. 

How many pictures could be named in which just 
mass scene after mass scene appeared on the screen, 
containing no dramatic purpose, no interest aside from 
their sheer spectacular value (an interest that soon 
dies if not fostered with glimpses of the personal story), 
just mass scene after mass scene until the spectator 
begins to wonder what in thunder the whole thing 
means? It seems offhand that any number of such pic- 
tures could be named. 

But if the director keeps his senses about him he 
never loses sight of the little things of the spectacle, 
they are as vitally important as the mass action itself. 

It might be appropriate to mention the recent 
German pictures in this connection. The German pic- 
ture director is noted for the production of spectacular 
features. In some respects he surpasses the American 
director, namely in the artistry of his big scenes and 
the effective manner in which he handles large numbers 
of people but on the other hand the German director 
has the fault of overlooking the personal story in his 
eagerness to get the spectacular effects. 

This fact is particularly noticeable in German pic- 
tures when they first come to this country. Of course 
the pictures first have to pass through the hands of 
experts. The titles are translated and revised to fit the 
styles the American public has long since expressed 

87 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

itself satisfied with. But more important, much that 
the German director left in has to be cut out. Pictures 
made in Germany and shown here as five or six or 
seven reel features very often run eight or nine or ten 
reels when they first are imported here. And in these 
extra reels which the American cutters painlessly re- 
move from here, there and everywhere in the long 
stretch of the film, are mob scenes used just because 
they are mob scenes. Mob scene follows mob scene, 
until each scene has no particular meaning, the mass 
effects grow tiresome and the spectator longs for a 
glimpse of the story forgotten so long ago by the di- 
rector. The American cutter is able to eliminate much 
of these superfluous scenes but he can not give the 
intimate story the prominence that was denied it in the 
beginning by the German director. 

Probably the reason why so many directors neglect 
this personal element in their spectacles is because of 
the fact that several years ago a big scene, that is a 
scene containing a few dozen or a few hundred people, 
was supposed to impress audiences with the fact that a 
lot of money had been spent on the picture and that 
therefore, because a lot of money was spent on it, it 
was a work of merit. 

"Here," a director used to say when he had doubt 
in the value of the story he was working on, "Give 
me a big ball room set and a hundred people in evening 
clothes and PU give this picture real class." 

The argument sounds particularly false and unsound 
today as it was all the time. But the motion picture 
directors of today, a great many of them at least, still 

88 



MOUNTAINS AND MOLEHILLS 

seem to think that a picture can be made good by 
throwing a lot of money away on lavish settings, and 
settings containing a lot of people, even though they 
fail to regard the personal element of the story in a 
serious light, even though they fail to make this element 
convincing and real. 

Some of the biggest directors in the business have 
this idea, strange as it may seem. These fellows, be- 
lieving themselves secure, take delight in poking fun 
at Mr. Griffith because he will stop a spectacular scene 
now and then to show a youngster playing with kittens. 
Mr. Griffith may have been inclined to pay too much 
attention to kittens and puppies at one time in his 
career but he was headed along on the right track and 
those who laughed at these scenes of his were then and 
there switched off to the wrong track. 



Chapter X 

SOME OF THE ARTS OF 
SLAPSTICK COMEDY 

^HE director of the knock- 
about comedy grossly ne- 
glected in the parcelling out of 
praise. — The inventive genius of 
Mack Sennett, king of comedy, 
and a digression on the '^dis- 
covery" of Charles Chaplin, 
prompted by our present day 
radical and liberal writers 



90 



Chapter X 

The usual critic of the motion picture is given to 
prating long and seriously about the art and the business 
of it with relation to the Griffiths, the De Milles, the 
Ingrams, the German Ernst Lubitschs and the ordinary 

whatnots and their dramatic productions, but when 
approaching the producer of the slapstick-thrill com- 
edy, they seem to forget that this branch of produc- 
tion is an art too and a very high one and one to be 
taken just as seriously if not more so than the art of 
dramatic production. 

The picture critics of the New York and Boston 

newspapers, for instance, will sometimes devote a 
whole column to a review of an ordinary dramatic 
production and then close with the line: "There is also 
a Mack Sennett comedy on the bill." Nine times out of 
ten this comedy so briefly dismissed is more interesting 
and entertaining than the featured part of the program. 

Aside from Charles Chaplin (Chaplin is his own 
director) the critics don't regard the comedy director 
in his proper light — often one of high artistic achieve- 
ment plus a marvelous amount of ingenuity. 

To digress for a moment, the case of the critics and 
the Chaplin comedies amuses the writer and many of 
his acquaintance immensely. It appears that the critics, 
commentators and publicists of national and sectional 
standing have only recently "discovered" Charles 
Chaplin. The reviewers of the daily newspapers and 
the magazines now hail each effort of his as masterly, 

91 



MOTION PICT URE DIRECTING 

pointing out virtues in his performances, in his attitude 
on life and in his inventive genius with remarkable 
pride. Chaplin has become the "fashion" with those 
who formerly thought his name a synonym for a vulgar, 
pie-throwing clown. 

It was some seven years ago that a number of motion 
picture trade critics and myself first saw the comedian 
doing a "bit" in a Mack Sennett comedy. Somebody 
said his name was Charles Chapman. Somebody else 
said it was Chaplain. They thought so. They weren't 
quite sure who he was. But everyone in that little room 
knew then that, whoever he was, he was great. 

Five years afterwards, as the picture subtitle would 
say, some of the newspaper critics woke up to the fact 
that this little man was an artist. And a year later the 
liberals and radicals of Greenwich Village, New York, 
and points west, discovered that Mr. Chaplin was 
somewhat liberal, even radical, politically, and so 
made the astounding revelation to their worlds that he 
was a great artist. Perhaps the above is a little unfair 
but if Mr. Chaplin had voted a straight Republican 
ticket it is hardly to be supposed that he would have 
been heralded as such a master of his craft by these 
people. 

But we in the motion pictures knew him in his true 
colors from the first and so perhaps this little excursion 
into the realm of jealous back-biting may be pardoned. 
However we feel somewhat as Columbus, in his grave 
might feel if Marshall Foch on his recent visit to 
these shores, should have announced to the world that 
he had discovered America. 

92 



SOME OF THE ARTS OF SLAPSTICK COMEDY 

But to get back to the art of the director who makes 
a good slapstick comedy. The directors such as Mack 
Sennett and his staff of associates, such as Hal Roach 
who guides the destinies of the bespectacled Harold 
Lloyd, and such as Henry Lehrman, who follows 
blindly but often quite successfully in Mr. Sennett's 
footsteps. These men, laboring tirelessly on the inven- 
tion of new "gags," stunts and fooleries for the amuse- 
ment of the picture public are deserving of immense 
credit. 

"Slapstick" is a term that ill describes the efforts of 
these men. It is a hangover from the period when 
motion pictures were "movies" and deserved no better 
appellation. It suggests, besides the act of employing 
the old stage slapstick itself, the equally worn trick of 
throwing custard pies. Strange as it may seem to some 
whose memory of the old days in the making of pic- 
tures overshadows their ability to make observations 
in the present, pies are seldom used in a comedy studio 
these days, except in the dining room for purposes of 
conventional consumption. 

The throwing of a pie was ceased long since as a 
comedy "gag" by the high class slapstick directors. 
Other "gags" have replaced it. Once in a while it is 
resorted to, probably just for old times sake but as a 
rule the comedy directors and those mysterious men 
of the comedy studio, who can hardly be called scenario 
writers, men whose inspiration is often the combined 
effect of phonograph music and bottled spirits, arc 
able to hand out something newer and more amusing 
than mere pie-throwing. 

93 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTI N G 

What appears to be most interesting in the produc- 
tion of these comedies is the amazing machinery at 
the director's control for the entertainment and the 
fooling, the funny hocus-pocus fooling, of the picture 
going public. Mack Sennett's studio on the western 
coast is probably the best equipped in this way and 
every mechanical contrivance he employs in the making 
of his pictures is guarded jealously by him and his 
stafif as a state secret might be guarded. Mr. Sennett 
doesn't believe in telling people how he performs his 
tricks. He works on the principle that the public is 
better satisfied by remaining mystified, of which more 
anon. 

So it is beyond the power of anyone outside of Mr. 
Sennett's confidence to set down the exact manner in 
which he causes to be done some of the most amazing 
stunts on the screen. One can hazard the guess that he 
makes a comedian appear to be walking on water by 
double exposure but, given this information, any other 
director would be hard put to it to do the trick success- 
fully. 

Mr. Sennett is often called upon to assist other di- 
rectors in producing a thrill. Most people well re- 
member Anita Stewart's picture of two or three years 
ago, *'In Old Kentucky." And those who can recall the 
picture will also be able to recall the scene wherein 
Miss Stewart, on horseback, urged her steed to jump a 
yawning chasm, rather wide and terrifyingly deep. It 
was one of the biggest thrills in the picture and it was 
made in Mr. Sennett's studio. Neither Miss Stewart, 
nor Marshall Neilan, who directed all the rest of "In 

94 



SOME OF THE ARTS OF SLAPSTICK COMEDY 

Old Kentucky" had anything to do with this particular 
scene. It was further said that Mr. Sennett demanded 
and received a sum equivalent to the yearly salary of the 
President of the United States, for his contribution to 
the old melodrama. 

A great part of Mr. Sennett's art lies in his inventive 
genius and his happy faculty of applying some basic- 
ally sound trick of mechanics to a ridiculous comedy 
situation. In this respect he proceeds from the same 
principle that R. L. Goldberg, the cartoonist, does. 
Those "easy machines" contrived by Goldberg, in- 
volved, intricate and ridiculous, that finally end up 
by scratching a man's back or slapping a mosquito, have 
as a basis an actual mechanical theory. So with Mr. 
Sennett. In a recent Ben Turpin picture the comedian 
appeared as a baker. He was shown "holing" dough- 
nuts with a mechanic's auger and going about his work 
in a perfectly serious fashion. A little later the sub- 
title "testing" was flashed on the screen, followed by 
the scene of the baker testing his doughnuts by slipping 
them over a bar and chining himself on them. 

The effect was utterly ridiculous, uproariously 
funny. And what was it? Really just an application qf^ 
sound scientific methods, never funny whea^ppiied 
correctly, but as applied to a bakery more or less of a 
scream. Mr. Sennett and his staff will startle audiences 
into fits of laughter time and again by such methods. 

While on the subject of Ben Turpin it is only fair 
to record here that Mack Sennett has never received 
the credit due him for developing this cross-eyed 
Romeo. Turpin can be, and has been, quite a tiresome 

97 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

bore on the screen. He proved it a few years ago by 
trying to star himself without Mr. Sennett's guiding 
hand — and he failed. Certainly in his case direction 
enters into his success largely. Ford Sterling is another 
who once left Mr. Sennett's guidance to form his own 
company. But he also came back to the fold. 

The tricks of the slapstick producers are numerous. 
The familiar scene of the automobiles skidding all over 
a wet pavement is sometimes actually hazardous to 
those participating but more often it is filmed with a 
slow camera, the cars also skidding around rather 
slowly, with the result that the completed picture gives 
the impression of sheer and utter recklessness. In the 
Ben Turpin picture already mentioned the comedian 
endeavored to eat asparagus and just as he would get a 
tip near his mouth it would curl away like a snake. Of 
course there are such things as wires and springs. 

The element of surprise enters into the making of 
the modern comedy to a great extent. Harold Lloyd 
and his director, Hal Roach, employ the method of the 
surprise laugh to admirable effect. One of the biggest 
laughs that this comedian has ever been responsible 
for was brought on by a totally unexpected surprise. He 
appeared as a youth who sought suicide as a way out 
of all his troubles. He climbed on the railing of a 
bridge with a rock hung round his neck and leaped 
into the water below. The water was only about a foot 
deep and the youth came to a jarring stop when his 
feet hit the bottom. The laugh that followed was really 
to be described as an outburst. 

Messrs. Lloyd and Roach probably scorn the tricks 

98 



, 



SOME OF THE ARTS OF SLAPSTICK COMEDY 

by which scenes can be made to look thrilling, prefer- 
ring instead to accomplish the actual thrill, more than 
any other comedy producers. It may be recalled that 
Mr. Lloyd once caused a variety of heart afflictions by 
appearing in a picture in which he was seen walking 
in his sleep on the edge of a high building. Fake? 
Not a bit of itl The real thing — that is the high build- 
ing, not the sleep-walking. 

All the studios in California confined to the elaborate 
production of slapstick-thrill comedy have their own 
hospitals and their own staffs of bonesetters and doc- 
tors. And, in order that the public may have its fill of 
laughs, these hospitals often have their fill of patients. 



99 



Chapter XI 

OTHER TRICKS UP DI- 
RECTORS' SLEEVES 

PROVING that the illusion 
once created by the double 
exposure has been completely 
spoiled by giving it so much 
publicity. — And so the spoiling 
process is begun on a number of 
other tricks employed by the 
director to fool the public 



100 



.^^^^^%^ 
W' 






THE PHOTOGRAPHIC x^'OKK IN "THE COXOUERING POWER" WAS 

ALSO AN ACHIEVEMENT 

EVERY SCENE IN '"THE rOKOrERTNG POWER" CARRIED SUBTLE 
SUGGESTKIN IN ITS \-FRV ATMOSPHFKE 



Chapter XI 

Mack Sennett's principle of keeping the tricks of his 
studio to himself and not spreading them broadcast 
through a publicity department and acquainting audi- 
ences with the "how" of all his thrill scenes is basically 
a sound one. It is the principle followed by David 
Belasco with respect to his stage productions. Mr. 
Belasco never tells how he achieves a certain effect. 
P. T. Barnum proceeded on a like principle; that there 
was "one born every minute" and that everyone of those 
liked to be fooled. 

Mr. Belasco goes even further and strives to prevent 
his stars from appearing in public. This of course is 
exactly opposite in view to the motion picture stars' 
idea of doing things. The more they appear in public, 
the more that is printed about them, the surer they 
are of their popularity. 

It is a question as to whether audiences would care 
more for Mary Pickford if they didn't know the size 
of her shoes, what facial cream she recommends, how 
much money she makes and how she spends her Sunday 
afternoons; as to whether they would care more for 
Constance Talmadge if they didn't know the size of 
her shoes, what facial cream she recommends, how 
much money she makes and how she spends her Sunday 
afternoons; as to whether they would care more for 
Wallace Reid if they didn't know the size of his shoes> 
what hair tonic he recommends, how much money he 
makes and how he spends his Sunday afternoons, it is 

103 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

a question that can never be answered. But in regard 
to giving away the mechanics of picture making, 
whether it is a wise or an unwise course, the question 
has already been answered. 

The pointed reference is to the case of the double 
exposure. This has been explained so many times (and 
often explained incorrectly) that now when a scene 
appears on a theatre screen in which the same player 
appears twice at one time, you can hear all around you 
the explanation of how it is done. 

As a result of all the publicity given the subject of 
double exposure its use to create a real illusion has 
practically passed. Immediately it comes on the screen 
an audience is snapped out of the story and confronted 
with the bare and unromantic machinery of picture 
making. 

John will thereupon say to Mary: "Oh, they do that 
by blinding half of the camera lens and dividing the 
scene in two. First he plays the part on the left hand 
side and then — " 

"Yes, and then," Mary will say to John, "they turn 
the camera back and expose the other side of the film 
while he's playing the other part." 

And there you are. All very simple. Easiest thing 
in the world to explain. But in the meantime Mary 
and John have lost track of the story, the illusion has 
been smashed for them and for all the people sitting 
around them. 

Therefore having proven that it is a bad thing to 
give away the secrets of the director and cameraman 
and cutter, I will now set down two or three other 

104 



OTHER TRICKS UP DIRECTOR'S SLEEVES 

secrets of the director and the cameraman and the cutter 
so that other illusions of yours may be spoiled when you 
go to the theatre. Consequently, if you desire to retain 
your illusions refrain from finishing this chapter. 

The fight on the edge of a high precipice waged 
between the hero and the villain of the story is a fa- 
vorite scene of every director's. It is usually terminated 
when the hero mustering all his strength, lands on the 
jaw of the villain and tumbles him off the precipice 
into the nothingness below. 

Now, of course villains are expensive commodities, 
often calling for five hundred dollars a week and more 
and no director can afford to let one drop over a cliflf 
now and then just for the sake of a thrill. Furthermore, 
they are usually happily married with large families 
and these families would be inclined to feel some 
venom for the director if he permitted the villains to 
go over the precipices. 

So the following course is decided upon as the next 
best thing to actually killing the villain. The first part 
of the rough and tumble fight is gone through in a 
natural way. Then comes the scene which begins 
with the hero's rush for the villain and ends with 
the blow that sends the unfortunate over the cliff. 
The villain takes his nerve with him and stands on the 
edge of the cliff and leans as far back as he is able. 
The hero then places one fist on the villains jaw and 
allows it to rest there lightly. Then he pulls it back 
suddenly. The villain follows him back to safety and 
they proceed to fight in a rough and tumble way again. 

But what has the camera been doing all the time? 

105 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

Ah, the camera has been grinding backwards so that 
when the above scene is flashed on the screen it looks 
as if the hero really hit the villain on the jaw. And 
just at the point where the villain is shown leaning 
back to the farthest of his ability the film is cut and a 
dummy likeness of the villain is substituted for the 
fall, thereby saving the director's reputation and his 
standing with the real villain's family. 

Then there is the close shot of the hero's fist landing 
with terrific impact on the villain's jaw and sending 
him sprawling. Naturally no villain really wants to 
feel the terrific impact of the hero's fist. The two boys 
may be good friends in real life. So the hero lets his 
fist fly gently and merely taps his opponent. 

But, of course, this wouldn't look realistic on the 
screen so what does the director do or order the cutter 
to do? He cuts or orders to be cut every second or 
every third individual picture from the strip of film 
that shows the slowly moving fist. As a consequence 
of this cutting the movement of the fist is given actual 
speed and finally when the scene is shown on the screen 
it looks like the real thing 1 

Of course the old trick of the baby being rescued 
from the onrushing train in the nick of time or the 
scene of the automobile just cutting across in front 
of the thundering express are generally understood. 
The action is usually taken backwards as in the fight 
on the edge of the precipice with most satisfactory 
and thrilling results when shown on the screen front- 
wards. 

And now that I have succeeded in spoiling these illu- 

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WALLY REID IN THE GEORGE FITZMAURICE PRODUCTION OF 

"PETER IBBETSON" 



OTHER TRICKS UP DIRECTOR'S SLEEVES 

sions for readers who have not previously had them 
spoiled, is it any particular wonder why Mack Sennett 
guards the secrets of his study with a certain amount 
of jealousy? 



109 



Chapter XII 

SOME WORDS FROM 
FRANK BORZAGE 

'Y'HE director of "Humor- 
esque'' and '^ Get-Rich-Quick 
Walling ford," a born creator, 
an instinctive picture director, 
believes there is not enough true 
characterization on the screen 
today, — Audiences like to see 
counterparts of themselves on 
the screen, not highly glorified 
heroes and heroines, is his theory 



no 



Chapter XII 

Earlier in these chapters reference was made to the 
number of capable and skilled men, as yet unproven 
with respect to the extent of their emotional experience, 
who were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to step into 
the limelight with a pictorial masterpiece. In only 
a little over the last twelve months two such men were 
given the opportunity and both proved themselves, 
emerging from their experiences as directors whose 
names now stand for the best in motion pictures. Of 
and from one of these men, Rex Ingram, we have 
already heard. 

The other is Frank Borzage who in the short space 
of a year has given picture audiences "Humoresque" 
and "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," both artistic and 
financial successes. Mr. Borzage is obviously a born 
director, that is a born creator, a born artist. The 
qualities are to be observed in him merely on a chance 
conversation. It is easy to see that here is a man with 
a great groundwork of emotional experience to serve 
him in his art. And Mr. Borzage is one of those who 
subscribe to the theory set forth in the first chapter of 
this book; that without a full background of emotional 
experience a director can never rise to the heights of 
his craft. 

Mr. Borzage's method of working may not be dis- 
tinctly individual with him but at least no other director 
has stated as clearly what he believes to be one of the 
secrets of making good pictures. Mr. Borzage believes 

111 



xMOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

that behind every face he sees there is some sort of a 
story. Unable to find out exactly what this story is, 
he will draw it in part from the face itself. The face 
will tell him certain things, the rest will be supplied 
from the imagination. 
«<r^ "Characterization is what makes pictures attractive," 
Mr. Borzage says, "Sincere, true characterization. 
There isn't enough of it in the average picture of today. 
There is too much dealing with the surface things, 
the superficial things. The majority of directors don't 
go deep enough into the personalities with which they 
deal. 

"I believe in developing every character, no matter 
how small, that there is in my story if that development 
is to prove interesting. And by interesting I don't 
mean the blood-and-thunder sort of interest. A 
character doesn't have to have committed a murder or 
betrayed a friend, or to have won a battle in a war or 
politics to be interesting. It is the commonplace little 
things in that character's life that can be thrown up 
on the screen and made interesting, absorbing, living. 

"It is my aim to develop characters on the screen 
that everyone in an audience will recognize. I want 
a man to say when he sees a character in one of my 
pictures, ^Well, that's awfully like Johnny Jones,' or 
I want him to say, 'Gosh, I did the sam^e thing myself, 
yesterday.' That is the kind of a character that makes 
a hit on the screen. A character that everybody recog- 
nizes and immediately loves. In every face I see I 
find a story. It doesn't seem hard. The story is right 
there lying on top, easily visible. You can take it and 

112 



SOME WORDS FROM FRANK BORZAGE 

make something real, vital out of it. And by face T 
don't mean face literally when it comes right down 
to directing pictures. Then by face I mean the char- 
acters in my story. 

"So many times even in the best of stories, written 
by the best of writers and prepared by the best of 
continuity writers, it seems to me that opportunities 
have been overlooked for the development of char- 
acter. It is probably because the majority of authors 
don't realize the extent to which you can go on the 
screen in developing a characterization. They are still 
thinking in terms of the printed page. They don't 
know quite how to think in pictures. 

"And so if a minor character can be developed with- 
out crowding plot interest and the important characters 
(and certainly minor characters can be developed in 
this fashion) why I always want to do it and do do it. 

"Again I say it is in these homely, plain, average char- 
acters that there lies the real interest for the majority 
of audiences. The average picture deals with a hero 
and heroine who are not average people. They are 
generally very superior in everything they do. Most 
producers and directors believe that audiences like 
such people and no other kind because they have always 
gone to see them on the screen and continue to do so. 
These superior people are in the majority of plays and 
pictures and stories that we see and read. 

"But just stop and see where the plain, average 
character when elevated to the position of importance 
in a film or a play, has captured the hearts of thousands, 
millions. I refer to the plays, *Lightnin',' and *The 

113 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

First Year' and to 'Humoresque,' the picture. Here 
were plain, everyday people, just like all of us and 
just because they were so like all of us we like them 
better than we like swashbuckling heroes in modern 
adventure pictures and entirely too wide-eyed and 
pretty heroines in pictures supposed to be representing 
life. 

"Of course, a dramatic picture with average people 
in it is the hardest thing in the world to write. That 
is, it seems to be from its scarcity. Perhaps though 
the writers proceed on the idea that audiences want 
fantastically heroic heroes and heroines because they 
believe people like to see themselves as they would 
like to be. This is a sound theory and no doubt is 
responsible for the popularity of the average picture 
but I think people really like to see themselves as they 
are. There are stories, and dramatic stories in real 
peoples' lives but of course they arc hard to find. Its 
all very well to say that there's drama in the life of 
the man who delivers the milk and in the lives of those 
in the apartment next door. It's there all right. But 
find it! That's what I try to do and that's what I 
try to do in my pictures. That makes them a little 
bit different from the usual picture perhaps." 

Mr. Borzage's "Humoresque" and his more recent 
picture from the Cohan play and the Chester stories, 
"Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" bear silent witness to 
his ideas on picture making with respect to character 
development. "Humoresque" contained some of the 
keenest character studies ever screened. Its first half, 
dealing with Jewish family life in New York City's 

114 



SOME WORDS FROM FRANK BORZAGE 

Ghetto was doted with gems of true characterization, 
recognizable as representing actually the average Jew- 
ish family of the east side. Much of this characteriza- 
tion was drawn from the work of the author, Fannie 
Hurst, and Mr. Borzage is the first to recognize this 
fact, and much more was supplied by the director 
himself. The manner in which he built up the char- 
acter of the Jewish father, for instance, instilling into 
it the proper amount of sympathy, humor and racial 
characteristic, is a lasting tribute to its work. 

There is an interesting story with respect to "Humor- 
esque" that has often been told. The picture had cost 
a deal of money and was watched with particular in- 
terest by everyone in the studio where it was made 
from William R. Hearst, down to the merest property 
man. It was something of an experiment. 

When it was finally completed and in readiness to 
be put before the public the heads of the organization 
decided not to put it out! They were afraid of it I 
Why? Well, because it dealt solely with Jewish char- 
acters, it didn't contain the ordinary type of motion 
picture plot, in brief, it was something quite apart 
from the usual type of picture. Therefore those who 
stood sponsor for it trembled lest it fail financially and 
trembled to the point where they decided it shouldn't 
be released at all. 

And then someone spoke up and started to champion 
the picture. It may have been Mr. Borzage. But 
whoever it was the picture went into a theatre and from 
the first performance started to break records. And 
such has been the case with a number of the best pic- 

115 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTIN G 

tures produced. "The Birth of a Nation" and "The 
Miracle Man" were considered by those supposed to 
know as failures before they were released. They would 
never make a penny. And all three of these pictures 
went out and cleaned up the shekels for their sponsors! 
Mr. Borzage has a few words to say on the subject 
of directing which also stamp him as a man from 
whom greater successes still are to be expected in the 

-;^ future. "Every type of picture," he says, "whether 
drama, melodrama, comedy or farce can be treated 
in the same way with respect to characterization. By 
this I mean that all such types of pictures are based 
primarily on the sincerity of their characterizations. 
If I were making slapstick pictures I would pay just 
as much attention to characterization as I do now. 
Look at Chaplin. Characterization, true characteri- 
zation, is at the bottom of his success. It is what makes 
his pictures more than mere comedies but masterpieces 
of picture art. 

"As for melodrama, I think it a vastly belittled type 

. of entertainment. Of course the old melodrama, the 
type disparagingly referred to as "ten, twenty, thirty" 
contained little merit beside its ability to thrill. Then 
there was no characterization except that which rose 
from the situations themselves. Situations created char- 
acter, true to the rule of melodrama. But today in the 
pictures we have the old melodramatic situations fitted 
out decently with true characterizations. Critics are 
inclined to belittle them and call them cheap. But they 
don't seem to sense the idea that life is made up largely 
of melodrama. The most grotesque situations rise 

116 




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SOME WORDS FROM FRANK BORZAGE 

every day in life. Read the newspapers, talk with your 
friends and see if I'm not right. Coincidence runs rife 
in the life of everyone. And yet when these true to life 
situations are transferred to the screen they are some- 
times laughed down because they are 'melodrama.' 

"If this is true then all life is a joke and while some 
humorists hold to this idea, I am not one of those who 
believe it so." 



119 



Chapter XIII 

WHAT TEMPO MEANS 
IN DIRECTING 

'T'HE matter of tempo is strict- 
ly of the technical side of di- 
recting, Edward Dillon ex- 
plains how comedy pictures can 
be "made" or "broken" through 
close attention to this angle of 
production, or a total disregard 
of it 



120 



Chapter XIII 

One of the most important matters concerned with 
the direction of a picture is that of tempo. Tempo 
is a term borrowed from the music world but it applies 
to pictures as accurately as it does to music. Its mean- 
ing is simple, of course, but to put it in a more com- 
monplace way it means the "timing," or rather the 
proper timing of the various episodes that constitute 
the picture. 

The value of proper tempo is at once recognizable 
with respect to some of the familiar episodes of pic- 
ture dramas. Anyone can readily realize the value 
of an ultra-rapid tempo in dealing with a chase epi- 
sode, either in comedy or in drama, say for instance, 
when policemen are chasing crooks. Here the motion 
is speeded up to its greatest possible extent while still 
keeping within the bounds of realism and probability. 
Sometimes, as is well known, realism and probability 
in a chase are far exceeded in burlesque comedies. 
Likewise, it is just as easy to pick out a typical sequence 
where slow tempo is demanded; any such sequence 
as a religious ceremony or an important dramatic 
denunciation. 

To point out one manner in which the tempo of scenes 
varies in less typical sequences and to point out the 
value of its variation is, however, a far more difficult 
thing to do. To the eye of the layman the tempo of 
a picture may never vary from one end to the other. 
Subconsciously, however, this variation of the tempo 

121 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

' ■ ■ IIIIW^— ^— ■■^M— H I 111 !■■ ■ . — . ■ I .■■ I I. ■■.■■■. ■■! .1 , , ■■.._■- 

is in a great part responsible for that person's enjoy- 
ment of the entertainment. Just as a chase scene is 
keyed to the greatest possible tempo and just as a de- 
nunciation scene may be keyed to the slowest possible 
tempo, just so other scenes of varying dramatic calibre 
should be keyed to rates of tempo of varying and rela- 
tive importance. Sometimes two sequences may be 
played together in which there is little more than a 
hair's breadth in tempo but little as it is it is still 
there, exercising a subtle effect on the dramatic worth 
of the picture as it unfolds on the screen. 

The director who has this realization of the proper 
tempo down to something approaching a practical 
science is the best director. To gauge the value of a 
certain sequence and then to think it out in minutes and 
seconds is a task of exceedingly difficult proportions. 
Then too, there is the circumstance of the speed at 
which the cameraman is grinding to be considered. 
A cameraman can manage the tempo of a picture by 
himself if he knows sufficiently and likewise if he is 
ignorant of the niceties of his work he may well ruin 
a picture through lack of proper attention to the timing 
of his scenes, despite all the efforts of the director. 

While it doesn't take any unusual amount of judg- 
ment to determine the scenes that should be played in 
fast tempo, it does take considerable judgment to deter- 
mine those that should be played in slow tempo. Many 
directors are inclined to award altogether too much 
film space (are inclined, in other words, to play in 
too slow a tempo) scenes of little importance. When 
a director has erred in this fashion a number of times 

122 



WHAT TEMPO MEANS IN DIRECTING 

in the production of one picture, the results show on 
the screen in the shape of lost interest on the audience's 
part. The spectator gets the idea that the picture is 
padded out with scenes just to fill in, whether this was 
the aim of the director or not. 

Scenes that should be played in a rapid tempo are 
usually played at their normal gait on the studio stages 
but when it comes to a scene that is played slowly for 
the reason of registering a certain strong dramatic 
point, these scenes are as a rule played a little bit 
slower than they would normally be presented. 

The question of tempo simmers down, therefore, to 
the question of how skilled the director of the picture 
is in securing desired efifects on the screen. Tempo 
is so thoroughly a part of a director's manifold duties, 
a part of almost each and every one, that is, that it is 
extremely difficult to disassociate it from any of them. 
In dealing with it, it is impossible to go thoroughly into 
the subject without saying something on pictorial and 
dramatic detail, about the ability of the players them- 
selves and about the camera and its master. 

But the picture properly timed and keyed is un- 
doubtedly the best picture. The drama that leads up 
to an inevitable climax that sustains the interest of 
the spectator through a considerable series of episodes 
before that climax is reached; the drama that, at the 
moment of the climax itself, fairly bursts forth on the 
admiring spectator in all its strength and force, is the 
drama made with close attention to the tempo of each 
of its episodes. 

Edward Dillon, one of the surest directors of light 

123 



MOTION PICT URE DIRECTING 

comedy in the producing art who received his schooling 
under such present day masters as D. W. Griffith and 
Mack Sennett, Jias a few interesting words to say with 
respect to the topic. 

"Tempo, the gauging of scenes and sequences to their 
proper time can almost make or break a picture," he 
says. "This fact is specially true with respect to the 
light comedy or the comedy-drama. Audiences as a 
whole, I don't suppose, can properly realize how much 
the proper tempo means in the success of a comedy. 
In my experience in producing comedies I have often 
noticed that the slightest variation from the proper 
tempo in one direction or the other, often spoils the 
effect of a possible laugh. A slight slowing down in 
tempo may throw an entire comedy sequence out of 
gear, so to speak, and irreparably weaken its effect on 
the screen. Too much speed in the wrong place often 
has the same more or less disastrous results. 

"A player can spoil a dramatic or comedy effect by 
taking too much time to walk out of a room or going 
out of it too quickly. He can spoil it by allowing the ex- 
pression of his face to change too quickly or too slowly. 
These instances are practical examples of what tempo 
means. A director has to watch his players constantly 
in order to prevent such slips. They demand particu- 
larly close watching when they are not experienced in 
pictures, say when they have been recruited from the 
legitimate stage. 

"If anyone seeks an actual demonstration of what the 
lack of attention to tempo means to a picture, let him go 
to see one of the various cheap slap-stick comedies so 

124 



WHAT TEMPO MEANS IN DIRECTING 

often produced. He can find them by steering clear of 
the theatres that show the well known comedy brands 
produced by the leading producers. When he finds one 
of the others he will immediately know it because he 
will see the familiar old chase scenes done in rank, 
amateurish style. The people in the chase will go 
fast in one scene and slow in the next. The director 
didn't know how to achieve the effect he wanted. He 
probably thought doing a chase picture was the mere 
job of telling one bunch of people to chase another 
bunch of people. And that is far from all of it." 

All of which is but one more reason why directing 
motion pictures isn't the easiest thing under the sun. 



125 



Chapter XIV 

"OVERSHOOTING"— AND 
THE SERIAL 

J^ udCK of proper attention to 
tempo often results in a direc- 
tor finding himself at a loss when 
it comes to cutting his picture. — 
The severe task faced by the di- 
rector of the two reel episode 
serial and how he must make 
every foot of film count 



126 




FRANK BORZAGE TALKING OVER A DOMESTIC SCENE WITH 

SEENA OWEN AND J. BARNEY SHERRY. THE 

PICTURE IS "BACK PAY" 

FRANK BORZAGE DIRECTING "HUMORESQUE." THE DICTAPHONE 
WAS USED BY MR. BORZAGE TO RECORD THE COMPLETE 
CONTINUITY INSTEAD OF HAVING THE MANU- 
SCRIPT HOLDER USE STENOGRAPHIC NOTES 




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Ph 

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Chapter XIV 

Tempo is such an intricate subject that the more 
that is said of it, the more it obtrudes itself on the 
matter of directing. If a director isn't careful, watch- 
ing the progress of the various episodes of his picture 
and measuring their importance and actual length in 
his mind's eye, he is liable to have too much material 
on hand when he comes to the task of "cutting" his 
picture. 

The cutting and the editing of a picture present 
together one of the most difficult processes through 
which it goes before reaching the public. And while 
cutting and editing are not exactly part of a director's 
duties, he exercises a certain amount of supervision 
over the process because in it his work is finished off 
and polished. 

The cutting and editing of scenes is the process of 
putting them together in the proper sequences and 
trimming ofif unnecessary footage so that the picture 
approaches the proper length. Skilled cutting and 
editing, carrying with it a careful appreciation of the 
director's work, can sometimes redeem a picture that 
seems hopelessly bad. Likewise lack of skill and 
appreciation in the cutting and editing process some- 
times "kills" a picture. 

But when a director has failed to properly gauge 
the tempo of the various sequences that go to make up a 
picture, there is all sorts of trouble when the finishing 
off and polishing process is started. The director may 

129 



MOTION PICTU RE DIRECTING 

have allowed too much space for each of his episodes 
and thus when the editing starts, the director or the 
editor finds it next to impossible to bring the picture 
down to the required length without mutilating the 
whole. 

Of course, the ideal state of affairs would be to 
permit the picture to run its natural length. Then 
there would be no trouble at all about directors' over- 
shooting. However, this would lead to pictures being 
unnecessarily long as there would always be directors 
who would abuse such a privilege. The length of the 
average feature is, however, elastic enough to permit 
a director to err a thousand feet or so in his judgment 
as to the length of a story and still be safe. Feature 
pictures run an5rwhere from forty-five hundred feet 
to six thousand feet. The average length is five thou- 
sand feet, hence the term "five reeler." 

And most stories can be told easily enough within 
the average five reels. There is one critic who claims 
that no story is big enough to consume more than 
five reels of film. He is pretty nearly right, at that. 

But with all these footages known before hand there 
are directors who will so misjudge the tempo of the 
picture sequences and who will so misjudge the im- 
portance of sequences and include in them more scenes 
than are necessary (these directors are usually the 
ones who work without a continuity), that when they 
have finished with the camera work on a picture, they 
find themselves with too much footage on hand and 
forced into the necessity of cutting out much of the 
story value of their picture. 

130 



"OVERSHOOTING"— AND THE SERIAL 

One of the most artistic pictures produced during the 
last year, a picture adapted from a brace of novels of 
universal fame was to a certain extent, spoiled because 
the director "overshot" various phases of the story. 
When he had cut it as much as he was able, when he 
had brought it down to ten thousand feet, it was quite 
perfect. And he was unable to cut it down further 
because each further cut he made on it would have 
been like sticking a knife in himself and twisting it. 
It takes more than courage for a director to cut out a 
scene over which he may have labored for hours at 
a time. 

However, the public, through the theatre owners, 
has declared itself as generally opposed to pictures 
taking more than an hour and a half to run unless they 
provide some remarkably efifective sustaining interest. 
As this picture lacked spectacular quality and was 
never smashingly dramatic it had to be cut down to 
average length and in this final cutting much that was 
good about it was removed and discarded. 

Most directors, however, can judge their tempo and 
their footage to be sure not to run into such trouble. 
The real difficulty on this score comes when the short 
two reel picture is made and particularly the serial 
picture so popular in some theatres today. 

In the direction of a serial, each chapter of which 
is usually told in two thousand feet of film, or two- 
fifths as much as is allotted the average feature picture, 
the director is faced with the necessity of making every 
foot of film contain either plot interest or action in- 
terest. Pictorial beauty, characterization, atmosphere, 

131 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

qualities which sometimes assist the interest of a fea- 
ture picture to a great extent, are discarded from the 
slightest comtemplation in the direction of a serial, 
even as similar elements are discarded in the writing 
of the magazine serial story. 

So it is in the production of the ever-popular rapid- 
fire, thrill serial that the matter of tempo is of the 
utmost importance to the director. If he takes a little 
too long in picturizing a certain sequence, where does 
he stand? He can't resort to the practice of the feature 
director, that is cutting out a few scenes here and there 
that he may have included for their pictorial quality or 
for their atmosphere. He can't do this because he 
has excluded those scenes in the first place. Every 
foot of his film is given over to plot and action interest. 
So it may be seen that this question of tempo enters 
importantly into the director's work. 

Incidentally the serial director's job is an exceedingly 
difficult one. Often in the two reels allowed him 
he must tell as much if not more story than is usually 
told in the five reel feature. He must constantly keep 
the action going at a break-neck speed. He can seldom 
let a player stand still for the short space of a half 
minute. Everyone is constantly on the move. The 
plot and the action demand it. The characters of the 
story must be characterized by plot and action. There 
is no space for the human touches and the characteri- 
zation by little details. Not in a motion picture serial. 

In addition much of the serial's action proceeds at 
an extraordinary rate of speed. The rate is hardly 
natural at all. The director must adapt himself to 

132 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

this strictly serial way of doing things. This ultra- 
speed is particularly noticeable when it comes to the 
big thrill, the big punch scene which usually closes 
an episode of a serial. Here the action assumes almost 
lightning like rapidity. The director must force his 
players to the limit of their capacity for speed. If in 
his scenes of plot interest there was not a half minute 
to be lost here in these scenes there is not a half second 
to be lost. 

The serial director works down to the line and 
doesn't allow himself much to spare on one side of it 
or the other. So, it may be seen, if he isn't a good 
judge of tempo he is liable to find himself in the 
very deuce of a mix when he comes to cut and edit 
his episodes. If he has allowed too much film for a 
certain incident there usually isn't much to do but 
cut the entire incident out and cover the hole with a 
subtitle. If, by any chance, he has not allowed enough 
space for his action, the episode appears hurried, awk- 
ward, jumbled, hard to follow. And if he has slowed 
some scenes down a bit so that he will have the proper 
footage when it comes to this cutting and editing, his 
audiences will jump on him for trying to "pad out" 
the picture. 

So, difficult as is the task that confronts the director 
of the five reel dramatic or humorous subject, the task 
that confronts the director of the serial must needs be 
set down as more difficult still. The only reason why 
the serial director is not given greater position in 
this volume is that the demands of his audiences and 
the limitations of his footage, permit him to attempt 

133 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

little that is regarded in a serious way by audiences 
of taste and discrimination. 

The average feature picture can be summed up on 
its merits on the day that it is shown but, "features may 
come and features may go, but serials run on forever" 
and consequently no one can attempt to sum up a serial 
in one sitting. 



134 



Chapter XV 

THE METHOD OF 
THOMAS H. INCE 

^ SURVEY of the Ince meth- 
od of production with due 
realization of the fact that he 
stakes everything on the picture 
continuity. — Proof of his success 
and a few of the reasons for it 
with an anecdote about a certain 
director who wouldn^t play ball 
with Mr. Ince 



135 



Chapter XV 

As a general rule there is no love lost between di- 
rectors and scenario writers. This is particularly the 
case in the big producing companies where directors 
work more or less on a schedule, an elastic schedule to 
be sure, but nevertheless a schedule. In these companies 
a director seldom has a chance to co-operate with the 
scenario writer on the construction of a continuity. 
Sometimes he has complaints on it which are never 
taken up and discussed due to lack of time. As a 
result the director blames the scenario writer for the 
mistakes in the finished picture. 

With the case of the directors who have proven 
themselves in an artistic way, it will be found that the 
majority of them have much to say about the handling 
of their stories in continuity form. They either actu- 
ally co-operate on the writing of the continuity from 
which they are to work or they claim to discard con- 
tinuities altogether and work from notes, a brief synop- 
sis or — from the head. 

Both the De Milles have much to say about the 
writing of continuities from which they work. As a 
consequence when it comes to the actual task of di- 
recting they are dealing with their own ideas. It has 
been related how D. W. Griffith prefers to work with- 
out a continuity and his reasons therefore. Frank 
Borzage is a champion for the continuity synopsis, a 
running account of the plot, undivided into scenes. 
Many other directors prefer this method, dividing 

136 




THOMAS H. INCE WATCHING ONE OF HIS COMPANIES AT 
WORK WHILE THE CAMERAS CLICK MERRILY ABOVE 




-^ 



THK HANDLING OF A GIANT MEGAPHONE IS ONE OF THE FIRST 

THINGS A DIRECTOR LEARNS. OBSERVE THOMAS 

H. INGE'S SKILL 



THE METHOD OF THOMAS H. INCE 

their pictures into the desired and natural number of 
scenes during actual work. All such directors claim 
that to follow a scene numbered continuity through 
directly results in a mechanical picture. Like the 
De Milles they claim that to produce such a picture 
well, they must also have a hand in the writing of the 
mechanical continuity. 

On the face of it the arguments of these directors 
seem sound. But it is easy enough to take the other 
side of the question and riddle the arguments com- 
pletely. The stand can be taken that the motion picture 
director performs no other functions than those per- 
formed by the stage director. And many and many a 
stage director has turned out productions of artistic 
worth by merely following the author's manuscript. 
Few stage directors decline to direct a Shakespearean 
production for the reason that they didn't have a hand 
in the writing of the play. 

Which brings up the methods employed by Thomas 
H. Ince, probably the most successful producing-di- 
rector in the entire field of motion pictures. Mr. 
Ince is at the head of a number of producing units. 
He has a certain number of directors making pictures 
for him. Over the work of these men he exercises an 
actual supervision. And when a director works for 
Mr. Ince he does what Mr. Ince tells him to do. 

Mr. Ince is one of the veterans of the picture produc- 
ing craft. He has developed more stars, perhaps, than 
any other man in the field today. William S. Hart, 
Charles Ray, Dorothy Dalton and Louise Glaum are 
the brightest of those he has brought out. And the 

139 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

secret of Thomas H. Ince's greatness, whether he 
admits it himself or not, is the minute attention he pays 
to the matter of preparing the continuities of the pic- 
tures from which his directors work. 

Probably Mr. Ince pays more attention to this prep- 
aration of a continuity than does any other producer. 
In his opinion the greater part of the work of pro- 
ducing a picture has been completed when the con- 
tinuity is in final shape to hand to the director. 

Equipped with the power of visualization to a re- 
markable degree Mr. Ince and his production manager 
thoroughly scrutinize the continuity when it is handed 
them by a member of the scenario department. Every 
point in the story, and every point in its development 
at the hands of the continuity writer is discusesd. As 
a rule when the continuity is returned to its author 
there are a number of alterations and changes to be 
made. And when these are made Mr. Ince goes over 
the script again. Sometimes this interchange of ideas 
is carried on between Mr. Ince and his scenario de- 
partment for six or eight times before the continuity 
is in final shape for the director. 

Then when the director finally does receive the 
manuscript he finds some such order as this stamped 
across its face : ^'Produce this exactly as written I" This, 
however, is not the arbitrary demand of an autocrat. 
If the director sees a place where a change will work 
some good to the story he has the privilege of placing 
the matter before Mr. Ince himself. But for the most 
part the Ince continuities are so thoroughly gone over 
before placing them in the hands of the directors that 

140 



THE METHOD OF THOMAS H. INCE 

few if any changes for the better suggest themselves. 

Therefore when the Ince director starts to work on 
the picture he is carrying out the ideas of the continuity 
writer and his chief to the most minute detail. His 
is the business of directing the picture, not of creating 
it in the broadest sense of the words. 

Now according to other directors who insist that 
such a method of procedure produces mechanical re- 
sults, is responsible for a work lacking in inspiration 
and all the finer qualities that go to make a picture, 
and degrades the director into the position of a mere 
clerk, Mr. Ince's pictures would be the worst the art 
has to offer. The fact that they are the most consistently 
meritorious that the art has to offer would seem to 
refute the arguments brought up by these others com- 
pletely. 

So what is the answer? Griffith produces good 
pictures after his method. Borzage and a number of 
others produce good pictures after the same methods, 
or methods practically the same. And Mr. Ince, hands 
his director a continuity divided strictly into scenes, 
each camera angle is numbered and for a purpose, for 
the director to go out and make all these camera angles, 
these scenes, just as Mr. Ince ordered him to. 

The answer is, after all, quite simple. Mr. Ince 
has capabilities matched by no other director in the 
producing art. One of his capabilities may be matched 
here and there but never all of them by another in- 
dividual. Thus Mr. Ince and his scenario department 
are the creators of Ince pictures. The directors he 
employs carry out his ideas. And these directors, while 

141 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

the above argument may prove them mere automatons, 
are in reality skilled men, artists for the most part, 
versed in all the niceties of picture producing. The 
fact that the majority of them, when they have left 
Mr. Ince's fold, have succeeded on their own separate 
accounts, is proof of that. 

The matter, therefore, simmers down to this simple 
problem. Can a producing organization turn out 
better pictures than an individual director? The solu- 
tion of the problem is in the following qualified state- 
ment: Yes, when the producing organization is headed 
by Thomas H. Ince. 

Mr. Ince's qualifications for such leadership are 
manifold. To begin with, he is, naturally, a born 
leader of men. If chance had led him into the business 
world instead of the art of motion picture producing 
he might well be a bank director or a railroad official. 
He would know his business thoroughly whatever it 
was and then would proceed with the utmost confidence 
in his own knowledge. Of course he would make 
mistakes even as he has made some few mistakes in 
picture producing but more often the reverse from 
mistakes would be the case. 

Anyone familiar with Mr. Ince will talk for hours 
on his magnetic personality. It is a personality that 
few, if any, seem able to resist. Thus he is able to 
give orders and have them carried out to the letter 
without giving offense. It seems that giving orders 
without accompanying them by a modicum of offense 
is a pretty hard thing to do. Dozens of men in the 

142 



THE METHOD OF THOMAS H. INCE 

craft of picture producing would trade almost any- 
thing they've got for this ability of Mr. Ince's. 

On top of these qualities, invaluable from whatever 
angle of business or art that they are approached is 
Mr. Ince's thorough knowledge of making pictures. 
This knowledge is not confined to one department of 
production, nor does he specialize in a single depart- 
ment of production. He is conversant with every de- 
partment and is able to consider each one in its proper 
light, to value it properly, particularly with its relation 
to the others. 

Still there are the individualists that oppose Mr. 
Ince and belittle his methods. He doesn't bother about 
them often as he employs directors who are willing 
to work into his scheme of production and these for 
the most part have been richly rewarded. 

There is an interesting story in connection with one 
individualistic director, whose name shall be kept a 
secret for his own sake, and the Ince organization. It 
appears that Mr. Ince had signed this director to a 
contract without inquiring into his willingness to work 
along the prescribed Ince lines. 

The continuity of a comedy-drama was handed him 
shortly after his arrival at the studio and he was told 
that everything was in readiness for him to begin work. 

The director read the continuity and addressed him- 
self to Mr. Ince somewhat as follows: "You don't 
expect me to produce this, do you? Why this contin- 
uity is so bad that it couldn't possibly turn out to be a 
good picture. I won't make it!" 

Mr. Ince, with the director's name fastened on the 

143 



MOTION P I CTURE DIRECTING 

end of a contract, is alleged to have replied with a 
certain degree of forcefulness : "You will produce it." 
The argument went back and forth. The director 
wanted to work but he didn't want to work in the Ince 
manner. Mr. Ince's pride and temper were undoubt- 
edly stirred and he insisted that the director produce 
the picture along the lines prescribed by him. 

Finally an agreement was reached. The director 
condescended to produce the picture on condition that 
when it was produced his name was to be left off it 
as director. Mr. Ince acceded to this demand. 

To do the director credit he then went about his 
work sincerely. Mr. Ince watched him carefully and 
realized that he was doing his best, though still believ- 
ing the cause was hopeless. The director, when he 
finished work, was dismissed from whatever further 
terms were contained in the contract. 

And so the picture was put before the public without 
the individualistic director's name upon it. It was one 
of the most successful pictures ever released. It was 
an irresistable comedy-drama and everyone who saw 
it fairly revelled in it. 

The director when he realized how he had talked 
himself out of credit for one of the art's best pictures 
must have fretted and fumed considerably. Equally 
galling must have been the large advertising bills he 
received for pointing out the fact to the motion picture 
trade in large announcements that he had directed 
the picture. For Mr. Ince had lived up to the agree- 
ment to the letter. He had not only left the director's 

144 



THE METHOD OF THOMAS H. INCE 

name off the picture but had removed it from all ad- 
vertising as well. 

Mr. Ince had his little joke. 

And probably the director doesn't care much now 
anyway. He is a success with another company and 
is still saying that he can't make good pictures from 
a continuity on which he didn't work himself. 



145 



Chapter XVI 

DIRECTORS SCHOOLED 
BY INCE 

j^ PARTIAL list of directors 
schooled under Thomas H. 
Ince who have made successes 
as individualists elsewhere and 
who, because of their successes, 
are actual refutations of the ar- 
gument that Mr. Ince turns out 
mere picture mechanics and car- 
penters, not artistic creators 



146 




THOMAS H. INCE, AMONG HIS OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS, CAN 
SHOW AN ACTOR HOW TO PERFORM IN A SCENE 
AND OFTEN DOES 



Chapter XVI 

Those who cry down the methods employed by 
Thomas H. Ince with respect to the directors who 
work in his studio often state that the Ince school of 
directing snuffs out any original ideas that a director 
may possess and makes him a mere picture mechanic, 
capable only of turning out mechanical and uninterest- 
ing pictures. 

And lest it be thought that sufficient proof hasn't been 
offered to counteract this argument some few of the 
directors who started under the early Ince regime and 
left to make their marks as individualists elsewhere 
are mentioned here. 

There is Reginald Barker, long on the Ince staff, 
who until recently was employed at the Goldwyn 
studios and who was entrusted with the direction of 
many of their most important stories and stars. The 
facts and records point to only one conclusion, that 
Mr. Barker has directed some of the most successful 
pictures made by the Goldwyn company and is one 
of the most reliable men in the field today. 

There is Fred Niblo who after a short session at 
the Ince studio turned his energy elsewhere. Mr. 
Niblo happens to be the man who directed Douglas 
Fairbanks in the highly successful "Three Musketeers." 
No one, within or without the field of motion pictures, 
has once stated that "The Three Musketeers" appears 
to be the work of an automaton. 

There is R. William Neill, who, since he left the 

149 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

Ince school some several years ago has been hard put 
to it to accept all the positions he has had offered him. 
Other picture producers are not in the habit of seeking 
a man to fill the responsible position of director when 
he can only carry out the definite orders of his superior. 

There is Jerome Storm who while with the Ince 
organization made a big name for himself by directing 
many of the pictures in which Charles Ray appeared. 
Mr. .Storm left Mr. Ince when Mr. Ray left him. 
Mr. Storm directed Mr. Ray's first independent pic- 
ture. Mr. Ray, since he has been directing his own 
pictures, shows sadly the lack of Mr. Storm's guiding 
hand. And Mr. Storm has had various positions since 
leaving Mr. Ray — in fact, has had quite as many as 
he could well take care of. 

There is Victor Shertzinger who while with Mr. 
Ince also made some very good Charles Ray pictures. 
With the Goldwyn company he made an enviable repu- 
tation for himself as a director of light comedy and 
proved more successful in handling Mabel Normand 
than any other director with the sole exception of Mack 
Sennett himself. Mr. Shertzinger is now at the head of 
his own producing company. A difficult post for a man 
to achieve who is no more than a mere mechanic taking 
orders from a producing genius such as Mr. Ince I 

There is Lambert Hillyer, who with this writing 
is back with Mr. Ince after several years in the service 
of William S. Hart, directing and writing the majority 
of that star's pictures. Mr. Hart would hardly pick 
a mechanical nincompoop to direct his screen efforts 

150 



DIRECTOR S SCHOOLED BY INCE 

which are considerably important both to Mr. Hart 
and the public at large. 

There is Frank Borzage himself who was with Mr. 
Ince a long time as an actor and who had ample oppor- 
tunity to absorb his system of directing. And Mr. 
Borzage, as has been previously stated, is quite a worthy 
director. 

There is Roland Lee, one of the younger directors, 
developed by Mr. Ince who only recently left him and 
who immediately made a name for himself directing 
some Hobart Bosworth pictures and who at this writing 
is with the Goldwyn company handling the directorial 
end of some of that company's most important pictures. 

This is an array of directors rather difficult to match. 
And if it was tried to match it from a list of directors 
turned out by any other producing-director or any 
other producing organization, the poor fellow who 
tried would find himself in for a life's job. 

To work in the Ince school of directing is, indeed, 
the luckiest thing that can befall a director. Instead 
of making him an insignificant employe, merely carry- 
ing out the work mapped out by the man higher up, 
it teaches him thoroughly all branches of picture 
directing so that when he strikes out for himself he 
is far better able to approach the excellence achieved 
by his former superior than he would be without such 
schooling. 



1^ 



Chapter XVII 

WHO CREATES A 
PICTURE? 

fP'HEREIN it is shown that 
the continuity writer and 
not the director is the actual cre- 
ator of the motion picture in its 
motion picture form. — Proof is 
offered by the directors them- 
selves who, perhaps unwittingly, 
have previously shown that the 
continuity writer is the begin- 
ning of everything in the studio 



152 



Chapter XVII 

So much dicussion has been set down in these pages 
regarding the results obtained when a director pre- 
pares his own continuity or when he works without a 
continuity in his hand ; and it has been explained that 
a large number of directors produce the best results 
when they collaborate with their continuity writers, 
that the question naturally arises as to who is the actual 
creator of the motion pictures seen on the theatre 
screens. Is the director the creator? Or is the con- 
tinuity writer the creator? 

This is a question that can't be answered without 
giving immeasurable offense to the one group of artists 
or the other. Every director will publicly announce 
that he and his fellows are the creators. And every 
continuity writer will announce the same thing. Having 
had considerable experience in the continuity line and 
never having directed a picture, I will probably be 
accused of bias when I side with the writing men. 
However, the facts of the case seem to point solely to 
the conclusion that the writers are the creators. The 
very directors who decline to follow a written con- 
tinuity in their work give particular significance to 
this statement. 

It has been shown that D. W. Griffith and a number 
of his lesser disciples decline to use a continuity on 
the ground that it cramps their originality. They can't 
make a good picture following another man's con- 
tinuity. What better answer could be found than that 

153 



M O T I O N PICTURE DIR E C T I N G 

in answer of the question, ''Who is the creator of a 
picture?" 

Both the De Milles are frank with the statement 
that they work long and arduously over the preparation 
of their continuities. Then there is Thomas H. Incc's 
method which, as explained, stresses the importance of 
the continuity above all else. It appears to be plain, 
therefore, that the continuity is generally regarded as 
the beginning of everything with respect to the motion 
picture. Of course, the original story comes first of 
all and is vastly the most important matter for con- 
sideration. But the original, as a general rule, is not 
a picture story. From the original story the continuity 
writer creates the picture. 

The continuity writer thinks in pictures. If he is 
efficient he is able to visualize his work as he goes along. 
When he has finished his task he has a completed pic- 
ture in his mind. And if his continuity is a perfect 
work he has a completed picture on paper. And, still 
further, if the director is capable of visualizing, he 
discerns this completed picture that lies before him 
on paper and proceeds to transfer it to the celluloid. 

The man who carries out the plans for the con- 
struction of a giant building or of a subway, the man 
who does the actual building of a great ship or the 
man who directs a picture, are not the creators of 
their work. The creators are the men who draw up 
the plans. 

The reason why directors claim that they can't get 
the best results working with another man's continuity 
is that they realize that directing has its limitations. 

154 



WHO CREATES A PICTURE? 



To actually create they must invade the field of crea- 
tion. And so the Griffiths and the De Milles invade 
the continuity writers' field and do creating on their 
own accounts. And some of them, of course, arc cre- 
ators of excellence. 

Then, these matters granted, why bother about the 
continuity writer, it may be asked. Without going to 
the defense of these greatly abused fellows it may be 
emphatically stated that without the continuity writer 
the directors would find their work greatly deteri- 
orating. In the field of production today there are 
certain directors who insist on doing their own con- 
tinuities, who refuse even the slightest assistance or 
suggestion from an outside source. Many of these 
men grow "stale" in their work and turn out uninspired 
and mechanical pictures. They "live" with a picture 
too long. They get to know it so well that they slight 
it. They know it so well that they think everyone else 
is on the same familiar footing with it. They see it 
through their own eyes only and they see it through 
colored glasses that obligingly obliterate all its faults 
and intensify its merits. These men won't let anyone 
touch one of their pictures in any process of production. 
They even insist on doing the actual cutting and editing 
of the film and the writing of the subtitles. Their work 
is, as a rule, artless, tedious to watch and fiat in the 
majority of effects striven for. 

This condemnation of the man who combines both 
the arts of writing for the screen and directing is not 
to be taken without exception. The rule is like every 

155 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

other rule and wouldn*t be a rule unless there were 
here and there an exception to it. 

So, instead of a creator the motion picture director 
really finds himself in the same position occupied by 
the man who sets out to translate a book from one 
language into another. The work has already been 
created and lies before him needing only his deft touch 
to recreate it through a different medium than type. 
Recreate seems to be the proper word. Deprived of 
the privilege of calling himself a creator, a director 
can at last call himself a recreator. 

And when a director proceeds to translate a work 
of his own from type to picture form he is filling both 
positions. However, the fact that he is creating in 
one of his capacities, doesn't mean that he is creating 
in the other as well. 

This sudden depriving of the director of all award in 
the creation of a motion picture and handing it to 
the screen writer may not seem at all just. There are 
directors who will say that such a claim is ridiculous, 
who will say that a continuity writer cannot possibly 
be the creator of a picture because he doesn't know 
the exact topography of the exterior location or setting 
to be used as background for the scene, who will say 
that there are hundreds of times when little pieces of 
''business" suggest themselves on the moment to the 
director. 

These and dozens of other arguments will be ad- 
vanced to riddle the statement that the continuity 
writer is the creator. But the statement will still stand 
as a fact. The slight changes necessitated when an 

156 




THE JEWISH TYPES IN FRANK EORZAGE'S "HUMORESQUE" HAVE 
BECOME WORLD RENOWNED 







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WHO CREATES A PICTURE? 



exterior location presents some unusual topography 
never seriously change the plot of the picture. The 
business introduced, if it is good business, enriches the 
plot so much the more. Then if the director wishes 
he may designate himself as a decorator in addition 
to a recreator. 

But despite all these words that seem to detract from 
the glory of the director, his work remains a high art, 
tremendous and difficult to master. His task of trans- 
lating from the printed page to the strips of film is 
no child's play by any manner of means. To accom- 
plish this work he must bring into play all his talents, 
his experience, his level-headedness, his judgment of 
story values, his ability to handle people, his knowl- 
edge of dramatic construction and so on and so forth. 
If he hasn't many talents he is liable to keenly feel 
the lack of them before he has progressed far on his 
work. 
— ^ The fact that the average director refers to his 
continuity or rather somebody else's continuity to guide 
him is no reflection on his own ability. It produces 
proper balance in the work of picture making and 
the director knows it. He knows too that the art of 
picture making is no exception to the old rule that 
two heads are better than one. 

The best scheme of things and one which is followed 
in many studios today is to have a director and a con- 
tinuity writer work hand in hand not only on the con- 
struction of the picture story but also on the director's 
end of it — the writer acting in the capacity of super- 
visor and advisor to the director. This method of 

159 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

procedure has produced some of the best pictures re- 
cently made. 

It would be ideal if human nature in general didn't 
contain those qualities which make armies and navies 
necessary and which make cats and dogs fight. 



160 



Chapter XVIII 

MUSIC IN PICTURE 
PRODUCTION 

'J^HE value of music in inspir- 
ing the proper mood in a 
company of players. — An argu- 
ment in favor of this aide to the 
director and the recitation of an 
occasion where a director went 
mad 



161 



Chapter XVIII 

Many directors use music to inspire from their actors 
and actresses the best performances. The idea is plaus- 
ible and often productive of the desired results. Often, 
too, it is carried to extremes. There is one quite famous 
star who needs "Hearts and Flowers" rendered in 
the slowest pitch of melancholy, to satisfactorily walk 
across a setting. She doesn't register any deep emotion 
in this instance either, unless walking can be so termed. 

It was some time in the year 1914 that music was 
discovered as one of the director's chief aides. A large 
ballroom scene was being photographed at the old 
Thanhauser studio in New Rochelle. Invitations were 
sent to members of the press to attend and watch the 
work. A rare innovation was promised. The innova- 
tion turned out to be the fact that the ballroom dancers 
actually danced to the strains of an orchestra! Pre- 
viously picture dancers had been forced to rely on 
their own sense of rhythm. 

Since then musicians have grown to be almost as 
vital in picture making as the cameraman or the actors 
themselves. At the studios in the early morning appear 
almost as many men carrying violin cases as there are 
with make-up boxes. 

The idea isn't at all as far-fetched as it may sound. 
Music, more than all the advice and coaching that a 
director may give his company, serves to cast them in 
the proper mood for a scene. National folk dances 
and folk songs offer proof of this. It is a familiar sight 

162 



MUSIC IN PICTURE PRODUCTION 



to see members of Latin and Slavic nations, stirred 
to the very depths of their souls by the familiar notes 
of some ancient folk song or dance. It will inspire 
them to forget their surroundings and break into aban- 
doned action. 

Thus, when an actor or an actress is called upon to 
do a particularly pathetic and emotional scene upon 
the screen, the proper accompaniment from musicians 
assists the player in striking the right note in the 
performance. There are comedians, too, who employ 
musical inspiration. However, when they are playing 
a burlesque scene they often call for the slow, tearful 
music that is used for the serious scene. It gives them 
a better slant on the burlesque element in the scene. 

Probably the director first conceived the idea of 
using music in the making of his pictures from the 
fact that it is used to such great success in the pre- 
sentation of the completed picture to the public. Some- 
times the difference in effect in seeing a picture in the 
bare projection room of a studio and then watching it 
shown in a theatre to a full orchestral accompaniment 
is startling. So, rightly argued the director, if music 
can be employed to such benefit in the exhibition of 
a picture, it can be employed to equal benefit in the 
production of it. 

In a studio where two or three companies are work- 
ing at the same time it must be confessed that the 
effect of the various orchestras is more or less confusing. 
The actors and actresses would be doing quite the right 
thing if they went altogether insane. I was in a large 
studio in the west only recently when a cabaret scene 

163 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

was being filmed on one set to the wildest of jazz tunes. 
Immediately to one side of it there was a subduedly 
lighted church scene, wherein hero and heroine were, 
for purposes of pictures, going through the marriage 
ceremony. The man who was playing the little 
melodian for this scene was having a furious time 
trying to make himself heard above the ten piece jazz 
band only a few feet away. 

The director of the church scene finally decided to 
await the time when the director of the cabaret scene 
paused between "takes" of his picture. He thought 
he had hit the right moment and was half way through 
his quiet marriage when "zim-boom-bang" the jazzers 
were at it again. 

The last I saw of the poor church director he was 
learning the latest dance steps from the actor who 
played the minister. 

Yes, many motion picture directors turn gray pre- 
maturely. 



164 



Chapter XIX 

JUST SUPPOSE 

]^0 you actually know what 
you could be up against if 
tomorrow you were given the 
opportunity to direct a picture? 
'What do you know about light, 
camera angles, makeup, exits 
and entrances? Could you suc- 
cessfully dominate the stage 
before a company of wise pro- 
fessionals? 



165 



Chapter XIX 

Practically anyone who has given any thought, 
whether serious or not, to picture production, thinks 
deep down in his heart that he could direct just as well 
if not better than the fellows that are directing. In like 
manner, when his fancy turns in the direction of writing 
for the screen, he is certain that he could write a better 
photoplay than the "creatures of luck" who are writing 
photoplays. This, of course, is human nature and can 
never be changed. 

But just suppose, for the sake of argument, that you 
reader (you representing in this instance one of those 
everyones who knows he can direct as well if not better 
than the next fellow) ; just suppose you are given your 
opportunity to direct. Just suppose that tomorrow 
morning you are to start your first picture. You have 
read your continuity over and again, you have as- 
sembled your cast, you have seen to it that the first 
setting constructed in the studio is to your liking. 
Tomorrow you begin work on actual production. 

You arrive at the studio at nine o'clock (for directors 
have to keep hours like everyone else, you know) and 
you step briskly out of your limousine and proceed to 
your office, where, after divesting yourself of outer 
garments, you read again the scenes you are to begin 
work upon. Following this you step briskly upon the 
studio stage and find your company waiting for you 
(providing, of course, that the star hasn't decided to 

166 




A RACE TRACK SCENE IN "TURN TO THE RIGHT" DIRECTED 

BY REX INGRAM 

REX INGRAM DIRECTING A "BIT" OF "THE FOUR HORSEMEN" 

THE WHITE CANVAS SQUARE IS A REFLECTOR, USED IN 

EXTERIOR SCENES TO GIVE THE PLAYERS THE FULL 

BENEFIT OF THE SUNLIGHT 




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JUST SUPPOSE 



become temperamental and be an hour late the first 
morning). 

You glance over the setting to see whether everything 
is ship-shape and in readiness. Perhaps it is and per- 
haps it isn't. Perhaps dust has accumulated on the 
library table over night and perhaps again the property 
boy has forgotten to remove it. (Must a director 
bother about such little details? Indeed, the director 
must). 

The dust removed you turn your attention to the 
lights. Are the "banks" in the right place? (Of course, 
you know that a "bank" is the moving mass of light 
that is flooded in from the side of the setting). You 
go into consultation with the cameraman and the chief 
electrician to determine whether they are in the right 
place or not. And you mustn't betray any ignorance 
about the placing of the lights to these men. If you 
do your standing with them begins diminishing even 
before you have begun work. Well, the banks are all 
right. So are the overheads. And the sunlight arc. 
And are you going to use any of the smaller "spots" 
to offset your star to the best advantage? These must 
also be in the right place. 

You have made sure then that everything is well 
with the lights. Thereupon you turn your attention 
to the camera. The cameraman has been told from 
what angle you are going to "shoot" the scene first 
and has "set up" his machine according to his own 
likes. You study the angle and you visualize just how 
the scene will look on the film, taken from this angle. 
You may want the camera a little closer or a little 

169 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

farther away and so you go into conference with the 
cameraman and after considerable argument you win 
your point and the camera is moved. This, of course, 
necessitates a slight change in the position of the lights 
again which, of course, you attend to. 

Then finally you come to the consideration of the 
players themselves. You know all about make-up, of 
course, and you examine the players closely to see 
whether they know all about it too. Is this fellow who 
is playing the butler made up properly? Is this girl 
who is to do the "bit" of the maid all right? No, you 
decide, she has too much rouge on her lips and not 
enough mascara about the eyes. You politely inform 
her of her mistake and beg her to hurry to her dressing 
room and alter her countenance. 

For this interference the maid looks daggers at you 
and departs. The star strolls restlessly about and looks 
at you as if to say, "Well, when are you going to begin, 
anjrway?" You look at the union stage hands and 
realize that while they are standing around here grin- 
ning at you they are getting paid for it every minute 
and their pay is being charged up against your work. 
And you haven't even started yet and here it is almost 
eleven o'clock! Still you mustn't become obviously 
flustered. If you did the whole company would give 
you a laugh, closely approaching the justly celebrated 
razz-berry. 

The maid returns. She is ready at last so are the 
others. Now you begin a rehearsal. Your scene calls 
for the following action. 

170 



JUST SUPPOSE 



— maid enters library door and crosses down to 
telephone. She answers phone. Butler pokes head in 
door and h'stens intently as she talks over phone. He 
is startled out of his position by the appearance of the 
master of the house back of him. He steps into the 
room and holds the door open for his master. The 
maid, realizing that she isn't alone, drops the telephone 
in confusion, and confronts the master. She makes 
apologies and exits, followed by the butler while 
the master of the house looks after her in a quandary. 

You explain the parts to the butler and the maid 
who perhaps are not familiar with the scene. Then you 
do start. And like as not the first rehearsal will appear 
impossible to your well-trained eye. The maid and 
the butler don't act properly^ You call a halt in the 
middle of a scene and explain matters thoroughly to 
them. The star, playing the master of the house, thinks 
that you might have explained all this before and 
plainly shows that state of mind. He is so capable in 
expressing his innermost thoughts that your sole conso- 
lation is the happy thought that he is a fine actor and 
won't need much direction. 

Finally the rehearsal runs smoothly. You then order 
"lights" and up they all go. And then you order 
"camera" and your cameraman starts grinding. And 
then you order "action" and the players start through 
the scene, every motion of theirs recorded by the all- 
seeing eye of the camera. To you, the director, stand- 
ing there watching and prompting now and again, 
every little fault of the players, every bit of wasted 
motion, every insignificant gesture, stands out in the 
shape of a tremendous eyesore. You know they are 
doing what you told them but still you tell yourself 

171 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

it could be much better. At length you tell the camera- 
man to stop in the middle of the scene. The players 
look up at you as if to say, "Well, what nowl" and 
you step forward and try to explain with the utmost 
of tact that the maid didn't handle the telephone prop- 
erly and that the butler didn't listen eagerly enough. 

So, despite their frowns, you proceed with the scene 
again. And this time it is the star who doesn't suit you. 
He doesn't seem to stop short enough when he comes 
to the door and he doesn't seem to regard the maid 
suspiciously enough when she confronts him guiltily. 
You explain matters, therefore, to the star. Now this 
star of yours may be a particularly conceited fellow. 
He may sincerely believe too that he is playing the part 
as well as it possibly could be played. He listens with 
something approaching a deaf ear to your patient ex- 
planations as to how the part should be played. 

And then he flabbergasts you with this remark, 
"Well, I am doing it the best way I can and I don't 
get what you mean at all. Suppose you go through the 
scene for me I" You try to think quickly and wonder 
what Cecil De Mille or somebody else who doesn't 
believe in showing a player "how" would act under 
the circumstances. You are lost and the only course 
for you to take is to show the star how you think the 
scene ought to be played. 

But can you act? Did you ever try? No matter, 
you've got to now. So you make a wild stab at the 
part. Everyone, you know, is standing around watching 
you. Some actors from another picture may have 
strolled over to watch you. They linger when they dis- 

172 



JUST SUPPOSE 



cover that you are to give an exhibition of acting. You 
rather have the idea that the entire studio force is out 
there watching you — and laughing at you. 

Following your performance you take the star aside 
and ask him whether he got the idea. If he is in a 
condescending mood by that time he may say, "yes," 
and so you start the scene again. And now the trouble 
is that you are inclined to believe that anything your 
players do is the right thing. You are still nervous from 
the exihibit you just made of yourself and trying hard 
not to display the symptoms of it to everyone around 
you. 

So you summon up all your courage and direct that 
scene with all your might and main. It's just got to be 
good. And when it's been done once it's got to be done 
a second time (all producers make two negatives, you 
see, one for domestic use and one for foreign exporta- 
tion). Inwardly you breathe a sigh of relief when 
finally that particular scene has been completed and 
then you want the camera moved up for closeups. 
(Again, of course you have marked exactly where you 
want these closeups. And you are ready to tell each 
player exactly what you want him to do over again for 
the closeups). And the cameraman busys about setting 
up his camera for the first closeup and you are just 
about to start taking it when the lunch hour looms up, 
the electricians and stage hands leave you flat and you 
discover that you have to postpone your important 
work for full sixty minutes. 

In the silent and lonely confines of your office you 
pace the floor and wonder how the afternoon is going 

173 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

to turn out. You discover that you have spent the whole 
hour pacing and forgotten to eat. No matter, your 
appetite was gone anyway and you go back to work, 
trying to feel ready for any emergency that the after- 
noon may produce. 

And so the day ends. The afternoon reproduces the 
experiences of the morning with variations. The next 
day reproduces it further. But if you have gained the 
confidence of your players and your various assistants 
and if you have proven to them that you know what to 
direct and how to direct, the work looms much easier. 
Every late afternoon after the picture is under way you 
and your cameraman and your star sit in a dark, silent 
projecting room and gaze upon the daily "rushes." 
These are the first prints of the scenes you made the 
day before. Thus you can see your work grow and 
thus also your star sees whether he caii place full con- 
fidence in you. If he discovers that he can, your rela- 
tions improve as the picture progresses. And after a 
while you don't even hesitate about getting out there 
on the "set" and showing him just how to do a thing. 
He'll like it too. 

You have also definitely proved to the cameraman 
and the head electrician and the assistant director 
(who knows that he could direct better than you) that 
you know more about your business than they know 
about it. You have shown them that you know how to 
arrange your players in a big scene so as to get the best 
possible dramatic and artistic effects, you have shown 
them that you can direct the manipulation of the lights 
so as to produce a different sort of illusion, you have 

174 



JUST SUPPOSE 



shown them, briefly, that you know more about camera 
work than the cameraman, more about lighting than 
the electrician, more about acting than the cast, more 
about composition than the art director, and more about 
writing than the continuity writer. 

You may know deep in your heart that you have 
bluffed them into believing in your widespread super- 
iority but they don't know it and so the gods of success 
are beginning to shine on you. 



175 



Chapter XX 

"STEALING" AN 
EXTERIOR 

EXPLAINING how direc- 
tors sometimes film scenes 
on busy streets in broad daylight 
without passers-by becoming 
aware of the fact. — An amusing 
incident that arose when one 
director endeavored to *^steal" a 
succession of rather dramatic 
scenes 



176 




A FRENCH TOWN WAS BUILT FOR "THE FOUR HORSEMEN" 
MERELY TO BE DESTROYED 



Chapter XX 

One of the most difficult details of production that 
confronts the director in the ordinary routine of affairs, 
is that of "stealing" exterior scenes. Those who have 
consistently attended picture shows are well acquainted 
with the exterior scenes, the illusion of which is spoiled, 
by the gaping and laughing spectators on the side lines. 
And then on occasion a street scene will be found that 
has been filmed right in the midst of heavy traffic and 
not one of the many people in the scene as much as 
award a sly gap to the camera. 

This effect of realism is produced when the director 
goes to the trouble of "stealing" an exterior. In "steal- 
ing" the director has his camera "blinded." There 
are various sorts of blinds used. A taxicab or limousine 
provide effective blinds. The cameraman can get in 
with his instrument and shoot the scene going on on 
the sidewalk and at the same time remain unnoticed 
before the majority of passersby who would otherwise 
donate to themselves the roles of spoil-spectators. 

Sometimes a truck loaded with packing cases can 
effectively conceal the cameraman and his instrument 
at the same time affording an unobstructed focal dis- 
tance between the camera and the scene to be filmed. 

Such scenes require careful rehearsing in the studio 
before departure for the desired location. Even then, 
however, the director must rely on the snap-judgment 
of himself and his players in the actual taking of the 
scene for it will offer peculiarities and differences of 

179 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

topography impossible of consideration in the studio 
rehearsals. 

Then again, in these scenes the players must wear 
either the absolute minimum of makeup to prevent 
them from being detected as players or, better yet, wear 
none at all. If the sunlight happens to be right, none 
is worn as a rule. 

Often in these scenes peculiarities arise which are 
interesting. I recall an exterior scene which a director 
for one of the large studios in the east endeavored to 
"steal" in which the action was of considerable im- 
portance to the story. The scene was supposed to be 
night and representing a little traversed residential 
section of the city. 

The action called for the leading man in the case 
to effect the actions of a man entirely too full of pre- 
Volstead liquor for his own benefit. In brief, after 
staggering about a bit, he was to collapse in a heap 
on the sidewalk. The heroine, coming along at this 
moment, was called upon to take pity on the poor 
wretch and take him into her house before which he 
had fallen. 

Just as she succeeded in raising him to his feet a 
policeman was to come along and question her about 
the young man's identity. To protect him she was to 
claim that he was her husband. 

To give the whole scene an added touch of realism 
it was thought that it would be better to have several 
pedestrians pass the hero by as he lay unconscious on 
the sidewalk. 

The time chosen to take the scene was late afternoon 

180 



"STEALING" AN EXTERIOR 

and a little frequented street was selected for the 
occasion. A number of people were passing, however, 
and these, the director thought, could be used in the 
roles of unconscious extras in the picture. 

But the director had miscalculated human nature. 
The passers-by, unconscious of the presence of a camera 
in the taxicab, really thought the actor was unfortu- 
nately drunk and several stopped to offer assistance. 
The presence of mind of the actor saved the situation. 
When two people bent over him and offered assistance, 
he angrily told them to be on their ways. Thus re- 
pulsed they moved on. Of course the hero accepted 
the assistance of the girl as the 'script called for. 

But the general effect of the scene was changed 
by the interest of the passers-by in the drunken man. 
It was thought that the majority of folk regarded 
such figures with antipathy. Instead they were inter- 
ested. 

The actor who was playing the hero explained the 
matter afterwards. "They weren't so all-fired con- 
cerned and worried about me," he said, "those two 
fellows that bent over me really wanted to know where 
I got it." 

The last part of the scene was interrupted also. The 
actor made up as the policeman interfered with 
the hero and heroine as per the scene but as he was 
questioning the heroine as to the identity of the young 
man a real policeman appeared on the scene and ques- 
tioned the made-up policeman as to his own identity. 
The masquerading cop told the real article that a 

181 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

motion picture was being taken and for the love of 
the director not to look round at the camera. 

The policeman sensed the situation and obeyed orders 
and as a result the scene appeared on the screen as if 
two policemen had entered into an argument as to 
what disposition should be made of the drunken man. 

Of course, when the scene was done the real police- 
man was not in the least averse to accepting a slight 
reward for his good services. 



182 



Chapter XXI 

THE IMPORTANCE OF 
THE ART DIRECTOR 

y^RTISTS are entering field 
of motion picture produc- 
tion both as directors and art 
directors. — Advice of the art di- 
rector should be sought on ex- 
terior scenes. — A few words of 
Maurice Tourneur 



183 



Chapter XXI 

Many artists have found the field of motion picture 
directing exceedingly attractive. The majority of 
them have entered the new field in the capacity of art 
directors, planning and supervising the construction 
and the dressing of the settings. Several others have 
graduated from such posts to the positions of directors. 

Perhaps the artistic side of picture production is the 
one which had developed less than any of the others. 
For a long time art directors, interior decorators and 
artistic designers were unknown elements in a motion 
picture studio. The early picture public demanded 
sensation and action. When an interior setting was 
used furniture was thrown in it indiscriminately. The 
more, the better. Grand Rapids and Louis IV fur- 
nishings were thrown in regardless. An early biblical 
picture showed the scene of the last supper with the 
assembled Apostles seated in a variety of modern fur- 
niture from the factories of the middle western states. 

It is only of comparative recence that real artists 
and architects have entered the production field. Today 
all the larger studios have extensive art departments 
that co-operate with the director and his staff in the 
preparation of the settings. Accuracy distinguishes the 
majority of the work of these departments. Errors 
in period pictures are seldom to be discerned even by 
the most watchful. 

But as yet the art director has failed to put in an 
appearance where he is needed quite as much as in 

184 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ART DIRECTOR 

the preparation of the interior settings; I refer to the 
exterior. Beautiful as are many of the exteriors seen 
in the modern pictures they often lack the proper 
balance. Any art student could tell you and point out 
where the composition of many exteriors is faulty. 

It is too much to ask that every motion picture 
director be an art director besides. A man might be 
perfect as a dramatic director and still be utterly lack- 
ing with respect to composition. But if the director 
cannot be versed in both the arts there should be, 
and doubtless will be in time, an art director working 
along with the dramatic director on every scene, in- 
terior or exterior. 

The former artists now actually directing are few in 
number. Perhaps the foremost of them all is Maurice 
Tourneur who came from France several years ago 
and who was previous to his stage and screen work 
in that country, a mural decorator. His early produc- 
tions here attracted widespread interest in the art itself 
because of the evident touch of an artistic hand. "The 
Blue Bird" was a triumph from the standpoint of pic- 
torial artistry. So were several others he made at the 
same time. But they didn't make money. So Mr. 
Tourneur turned to the production of frankly melo- 
dramatic subjects. These he endowed too with all 
the art at his command and so lifted melodrama to a 
higher plane than it ever reached before. 

Perhaps the fate of Mr. Tourneur's "The Blue Bird" 
is timely to recall now. Those today who clamor for 
more artistic and better things on the screen and who 
opine that no director or producing company has the 

185 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

courage to attempt such things and who insist that if 
such things were attempted they would be eagerly re- 
ceived, will do well to heed the pathetic fate of "The 
Bluebird." The picture director and producer are 
always willing to strive for something a little finer on 
the screen but to date the public hasn't given them any 
appreciable amount of encouragement. 

Hugo Ballin and Penhryn Stanlaws are among the 
artists now directing who have attained prominence 
in both fields. The latter has made long strides in the 
short time he has been in a picture studio and gives 
promise of attaining the same heights in the newer art 
that he attained in his original line of creative endeavor. 



186 




PICTORIAL BEAUTY WAS A DIRECTORIAL ACHIEVEMENT DIS- 
PLAYED IN "THE FOUR HORSEMEN" 

A SCENE FROM "THE FOUR HORSEMEN." HERE IS A STILL THAT 

ILLUSTRATES REX INGRAM'S ABILITY TO SUGGEST 

A SITUATION 



Chapter XXII 

DIRECTORIAL 
CONVENTIONS 

JN which the business of slam- 
ming directors in general is 
freely indulged.—Directors have 
created an array of utterly false 
conventions by their constant use 
of them. — A plea for them to 
stop. — A particular plea for 
them to stop picking on tobacco 



189 



Chapter XXII 

Most of the chapters in this book, when dealing speci- 
fically with the work of directors, have been keyed in 
the general tone of praise. The reader might thus 
absorb the idea that it is thought no room for improve- 
ment in the youngest of the arts exists. However, most 
of the men mentioned in former chapters have con- 
sistently worthy records but in case the idea prevails 
that I believe the millenium in pictures has long since 
been attained, I hereby dedicate this chapter to a gen- 
eral slamming of every director in the production art. 
The awful conventions that every director seems to 
have adopted as his own (the best directors and the 
worst in one degree or another) are one of the eyesores 
of modern picture productions. 

The little slips in technicalities such as showing a 
cigar just lighted in one scene and burned to a butt 
in the next and the paradoxical fact that John exits 
from one interior wearing a brown derby and enters 
another wearing a black derby — these little slips which 
are themselves conventions of oversight, can be left to 
the motion picture fans who constantly write the papers 
calling attention to them. 

There are more real conventions that, little though 
they are, have long since become a terrible bore to 
those who view pictures through eyes at all critical, sim- 
ply because directors on a whole seem to have adopted 
these conventions as if they were actually real and 
part of life. I mean such little things as the ever- 

190 



DIRECTORIAL CONVENTIONS 

present wall safe in the library setting and the childish 
and idiotic little dresses with which telephones are 
clothed. I am not of the socially elect but no friend 
of mine maintains a wall safe in his library, a safe 
which, with one good firm wrench properly applied, 
would leave a gaping cavity in the wall. Neither am 
I accustomed to visiting ladies' boudoirs but I am 
firmly convinced that dressing a telephone as a doll 
is something that simply isn't done in the best regu- 
lated families. It is simply and impurely a trick of 
the "movies." 

And no more natural is it for every man to keep a 
pistol in the top drawer of his desk. I once conducted 
a surreptitious investigation of the top drawers of 
various of my friends and could have acquired a miscel- 
laneous collection of everything from old Overholt to 
scissors without including in it a pistol. 

Mention these foolish little conventions to a director 
and he will enjoy a hearty laugh over them with you. 
But the very next day he will return to his work of 
producing a picture and use everyone of these tricks 
and a whole lot more with never so much as a thought. 
Fortunately, however, the pistol in the drawer trick 
has so often been laughed at and down on the screen 
that most directors are fighting clear of it. 

Another convention which seems to grate against 
people of taste is the habit of directors permitting their 
property man to pile a breakfast table with dozens of 
varieties of knives, forks and spoons. The morning 
breakfast of the newlyweds usually appears on the 
screen as a parade of fine silverware. 

191 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 



Directors, without number, also choose to ignore the 
common conventions of gentlemen until, ignoring them 
to such an extent, they have created an opposite set of 
conventions to those that actually exist in all social 
circles of life, the poorest and the richest. Specifically, 
directors forget to tell their actors to rise when a lady 
sits at a table and often are at a loss as to the proper 
thing for a gentleman to do with his hat when talking 
to a lady. 

Then there are the horrible directorial conventions 
regarding college life. A motion picture college is 
full of snobs, its dormitories are made up of rooms 
wall-papered with pennants and peopled with thirty- 
five year old actors in bulky sweaters who never stir 
without a pipe with a tremendous bowl and a mandolin 
or some stringed instrument. 

There are, too, the tiresome conventions of the small 
town with the inevitable and unrealistic rubes. In 
fact, here the director has taken a figure created for 
burlesque shows and meant only for burlesque shows 
and impossible farce comedies and adopted it as a real 
person, an actual inhabitant of a real small town. 

There are, too, the wearisome conventions of western 
mining camp life as shown on the motion picture screen. 
Perhaps censor boards and writers have contributed in 
producing these conventions; chief of which is the fact 
that every dance hall queen is virtue personified, a 
Pollyanna in spangles, but they are conventions and 
unreal ones, nevertheless. 

There is the unreal mother of the films. The con- 
vention is that if she is a fond and loving mother she 

192 



DIRECTORIAL CONVENTIONS 

must sit and knit and sit and knit and occasionally wipe 
away a tear or two. And if she is not represented thus, 
as fond and motherly, she must be represented as an 
impossible social climber or a freak feminist on a par 
with the suffragettes of burlesque shows ten years ago. 
Normal mothers reach the screen once in a hundred 
times. 

It is granted again that screen writers and censor 
boards have assisted considerably in building up these 
false conventions, but the director is the lucky fellow 
that has it in his power to change them. Let him go 
about his task gradually if he so wishes, but let him go 
about it. 

Only recently I had cause to give complaint to the 
practice of directors in identifying cigarettes solely 
with villains. Some of the screen villains have actually 
been permitted to reach the point in their careers when 
the mere manner of toying with a cigarette signifies 
some specific course of villainy. Their actions with 
cigarettes are as plain as the old-fashioned moustachi- 
oed villain's actions when he strode upon the stage and 
pronounced "Curses 1" 

Such a convention is altogether too dangerous besides 
being funny. The reformers have already begun to 
associate the cigarette with villainy. And if the di- 
rectors, through their villains, allow them to go that 
way, we will soon see the departure T)f cigarettes from 
our midst altogether, even as the lamented drink has 
departed — or is supposed to have departed. 

I, for one, am going to blame the directors for such 
a state of affairs. When a cigarette-legger approaches 

193 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

me in future years and whispers, "I know where you 
can get a package of your favorite brand for two dol- 
lars," I'm going to hit him and curse the director and 
his conventions that he wouldn't change even when I 
thus warned him. 



194 



Chapter XXIII 

ERNST LUBITSCH: 
GERMAN DIRECTOR 

l^UBITSCH, on his first visit 
to American shores, gives 
some few of his ideas on picture 
directing, — "Passion," ''Decep- 
tion," and ''The Wife of 
Pharoah" are proof of his skill 
but he has faults and can afford 
to absorb much of the technique 
of the American director. — His 
discovery of Pola Negri a great 
stroke 



195 



Chapter XXIII 
Earlier mention has been made in these pages to 
German pictures. Lest this term be confusing to those 
without the picture trade and in the hinterlands, it 
may be explained that these recently imported pictures 
are generally advertised as "European pictures," "con- 
tinental spectacles" or with any blanket descriptive 
phrase that possibly but not pointedly includes Ger- 
many. There seems to be no good cause for refusing to 
give the spade its proper name today and if there are 
still those unacquainted with the fact, it can here be 
announced that "Passion," "Deception," "The Golem," 
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "One Arabian Night," 
etc., etc., were all produced in Germany. 

"Passion" and "Deception," produced under the di- 
rection of the man considered Germany's foremost di- 
rector, Ernst Lubitsch, represent the best in the Ger- 
man art that has yet been extensively shown here in 
the United States. There is another production, how- 
ever, "The Indian Tomb," called so temporarily at 
least, and directed by a gentleman with the unassuming 
cognomen of Joe May, that is destined to far over- 
shadow anything that Mr. Lubitsch has yet been re- 
sponsible for. But of this production more anon. 

Mr. Lubitsch, as said, has been accorded tremendous 
praise on this side of the Atlantic. The New York 
critics swept him up to the plane with D. W. Griffith 
as soon as "Passion" and "Deception" were publicly 
shown, and Mr. Lubitsch positively doesn't belong be- 

196 




ELSIE FERGUSON IN THE GEORGE FITZMAURICE PRODUCTION 

OF "PETER IBBETSON" 



ERNST LUBITSCH : GERMAN DIRECTOR 

side Mr. Griffith, despite the fact that he is a great 
artist. However and notwithstanding the critics have 
formed such a habit of awarding fulsome praise to 
everything that bears the Lubitsch name that the situ- 
ation is becoming funny. A gentleman in the pro- 
duction department of one of the large film companies 
recently advanced the thought that the company should 
release a domestic picture, long considered inferior for 
the American market, with the name Lubitsch upon 
it and the line "made in Germany" stamped across 
its face. No matter how bad it was these counterfeits 
would assure it of good reviews was the contention. 
When the work of Mr. Lubitsch is seriously con- 
sidered and balanced, the good points and the bad 
points, the conclusion must inevitably be reached that 
he is an artistic director, but lacking or rather, to give 
him the benefit of the doubt, slighting details of pro- 
duction and story, that give every great picture its 
lasting stamp of individualism. In a previous chapter 
it was contended that the majority of German directors, 
in the production of spectacular works, overlooked the 
personal story in an effort to be awe-inspiring with 
their mob scenes. In a sense this criticism holds true 
with Mr. Lubitsch. Details of story mean little to 
him. In fact, on his first visit to the United States, 
when interviewed, he expressed amazement over the 
fact that Cecil De Mille in one of his pictures, "For- 
bidden Fruit," to be exact, brought out the predicament 
of the heroine, a social masquerader, by planting in 
closeups her hesitancy about the selection of the right 
fork for the various courses of a dinner. Such detail 

199 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

work, which goes a long way toward humanizing a 
story no matter how melodramatic the structure of 
the whole thing may be, is unknown to the German 
directors of which Mr. Lubitsch is, at the moment, 
the bright and shining example. 

Consequently, it may be asked; How can Mr. Lu- 
bitsch be placed beside the American, D. W. Griffith, 
when in such details Mr. Griffith excels? His latest 
spectacle, "Orphans of the Storm," is proof again that 
he is a master of blending the personal story with the 
spectacular background. 

At present, economic situations in Germany permit 
the production of spectacles there on a scale of lavish- 
ness which our American directors could not duplicate 
without sending their backers into bankruptcy. Labor 
is so cheap that the most magnificent settings can be 
erected in the German studios for small sums of money, 
sums that would be small even if the rate of exchange 
between Germany and the United States which makes 
them seem ridiculously small, was more evenly bal- 
anced. Thus a new field of effects is open to the 
German director that is correspondingly being denied 
the American director by the increasing cost of labor 
and materials. 

Mr. Lubitsch is one of those who has made excellent 
use of these magnificent settings provided him. He 
has peopled them with thousands of supernumeraries 
and he is a born artist when it comes to directing the 
movements and actions of great groups of people. He 
manages to get more movement and color into such 

200 



^ 



ERNST LUBITSCH; GERMAN DIR ECTOR 

scenes than the great majority of American directors 
have managed to achieve in the past. 

So, too, Mr. Lubitsch seems able to extract the max- 
imum ability from his actors and actresses. He was an 
actor once himself and a good one and, contrary to an 
opinion, expressed earlier in this book, believes in show- 
ing his actors how to play their scenes. Indeed, they 
are told very little concerning the story but rely for 
all their inspiration upon Mr. Lubitsch. 

In his more serious statements concerning picture 
directing, Mr. Lubitsch is mostly inclined to point out 
the faults of pictures and the difficulty of producing 
them, than to explain what he considers the finer points 
of directorial technique. 

Mr. Lubitsch talked, through an interpreter, about 
the very weakness of his and others that has just been 
noted. '*So many pictures that promise much in their 
early stages," he said, "are in the end spoiled by a lack 
of the proper balance and blending of all the elements 
that go to make the picture. The work of the author 
is so often sacrificed for the pictorial effect of the di- 
rector. The painter (scenic designer) so often has 
to give way to the importance of the dramatic scene." 

All of which is exactly right. The majority of 
American directors whose work has been considered 
in this book know just how to achieve proper balance 
in their pictures. They know where the work of the 
author ends and that of the scenic artist begins. No 
director worthy of serious consideration in an American 
studio today permits his dramatic scenes to be sacrificed 
to make way for masterpieces of pictorial background. 

201 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

Nor does he reverse the mistake and sacrifice pictorial 
background for dramatic scenes or anything else. He 
knows how to achieve the proper balance. 

"I prefer to suggest ideas and situations in my pic- 
tures," he continued, "rather than to load down a scene 
with nothing but the starkly realistic. I prefer my 
actors, too, to suggest an emotion rather than to register 
it obviously on the screen." 

Here, perhaps, more than in any other direction 
does Mr. Lubitsch's greatness actually lie. He uses 
scenes, exteriors, actors to subtly and powerfully sug- 
gest an effect, rather than to .use the same properties 
merely to obviously point out such an effect. It is 
this method, too, that, as has also been pointed out 
previously, is Rex Ingram's forte. Mr. Lubitsch's art 
in this direction is exemplified in both "Passion" and 
"Deception" as well as in "The Loves of Pharaoh," his 
most recent picture which he brought with him from 
Germany. 

Mr. Lubitsch went on to say, and every other inter- 
viewer seized upon his words with enthusiasm, that 
he only cuts his pictures once. Some remarks have 
already been recorded on how important a part of 
picture making is the cutting and editing of the scenes 
after they have left the director's hands. It has been 
my privilege to see many of Mr, Lubitsch's pictures 
as well as a number of other German productions be- 
fore they have been shown to the American public. 
The one great fault with those produced by Mr. 
Lubitsch is that they are far from properly cut and 
edited. 

« 202 



ERNST LUBITSCH: GERMAN DIRECTOR 

Hence, I am unable to rush into print to praise Mr. 
Lubitsch because of his statement that he only cuts his 
picture once. Rather, I will write here the sound 
advice that in future he cut his pictures eight, nine 
or ten times. After Mr. Lubitsch's single cutting of 
his pictures they run twice too long for the American 
public. A point which can be successfully com- 
municated to an audience in a quick interchange of 
closeups by an American director will take Mr. Lu- 
bitsch the laborious interchange of ten or a dozen 
closeups, the last one differing very little from the 
first one. 

The reason for this I am unable to account for. 
Mr. Lubitsch believes in the art of suggestion as he says. 
Then why does he drive home a minor point with so 
many hammers when a little touch from his index 
finger is sufficient to accomplish his ends? Clearly in 
these two respects Mr. Lubitsch is a direct contradiction 
of himself. Does he do this unwittingly or does he do 
it because his public (the German public) demands to 
have a point driven home with sledge hammer blows? 
In the light of no other answer, we must accept the 
latter conclusion and chalk the matter up against the 
stupidity of "continental" picture audiences which 
seems a bit harsh. 

These words on Mr. Lubitsch seem so unsatisfactory 
on second reading that there is an inclination to discard 
them altogether. In the first place they have the flavor 
of 100 per cent Americanisrn, i. e. attacking or waxing 
unenthusiastic about the work of a German director 
merely because he is a German director. Which is 

203 



MOTION PICT URE DIRECTING 

not the case at all and for proof of which I ask you to 
turn quickly to the next chapter. 

Mr. Lubitsch has received so much public praise 
that to go against the tide here can not help but seem 
purely the inspiration of a pig-head. But then there 
is no denying that Mr. Lubitsch is a contradiction of 
himself. He talks about suggestion and then does the 
sledge-hammer trick, he talks about cutting his pictures 
once when such a feat is an impossibility. 

He is an artist, potentially very great without a doubt, 
but not as mature as many of his sponsors would have 
us believe. His tours of the American studios will 
doubtless have a marked effect on his future produc- 
tions made abroad. It is to be fondly hoped that he 
will absorb only the good points of American technique 
and combine these with the good points of his own tech- 
nique, discarding the bad points of each set. When he 
accomplishes this I will line up and sing his praises 
lustily along with the others who now hail him as a 
Moses in the bullrushes of picturedom. 

But wait! After all Mr. Lubitsch is great. He 
discovered Pola Negri. HochI 



204 



Chapter XXIV 

JOE MAY: GERMAN 
DIRECTOR 

FN which it is pointed out that 
in three of Mr. May's pic- 
tures he displays more qualifi- 
cations to be heralded as Ger- 
many's best artist than Mr. Lu- 
bitsch. — *'The Indian Tomb" a 
superfine blending of popular 
appealing pictorial elements 



205 



Chapter XXIV 

From the standpoint of producing pictures with tre- 
mendous popular appeal and at the same time investing 
them with artistic settings, settings that fairly belie 
description, and from the standpoint of paying close 
attention to detail of story and acting, from these 
standpoints which are all important, Joe May, pre- 
viously mentioned, "has it," in the vernacular, "all 
over" Ernst Lubitsch. 

Unfortunately, Mr. May had not, at this writing, 
ventured to American shores. When he does come it 
is fondly hoped that the same interviewers and critics 
who scrambled for words from Mr. Lubitsch and con- 
sidered them as gold will listen to what Mr. May has 
to say and consider it worth something more than the 
German mark. 

I would have liked to include a first hand interview 
from Mr. May in this chapter. If I had wirelessed 
him for his formulae of production he doubtless would 
have replied in German idiom : "Get a good story and 
go to it." 

To date I have seen three of his pictures, one superbly 
imagined and mounted mystical drama, "The Indian 
Tomb," one thrilling serial entitled "The Mistress of 
the World" and one intense modern society drama at 
present entitled "Lavinia Morland's Confession." And 
so I can only form an opinion as to his method of 
working, of directing his pictures. And this opinion 

206 




CECIL B. DE MILLE DIRECTING 
CECIL B. DE MILLE WATCHING A REHEARSAL 



JOE MAY; GERMAN DIRECTOR 

is that he embraces in his technique all that is meritori- 
ous in the American director's technique, exactly what 
Ernst Lubitsch should do to honestly earn the fulsome 
praise that is his. 

"The Indian Tomb" is by all odds the most amazing 
picture that I have ever seen. To begin with, Mr. 
May had a hand in the adaptation of it. He collab- 
orated on the continuity which is after the generally 
approved method of the best American directors. He 
spent no end of time on this work, presumably, for Mr. 
Lubitsch tells us that all German directors pour over 
the continuity of their pictures for weeks and months 
so that finally when they are ready to begin the actual 
filming of the picture every scene is "fool-proof." This 
is the method of Thomas H. Ince to the letter. 

In the second place, Mr. May must have been given 
half a dozen billion marks or more to spend on settings. 
The beautiful Indian settings that are to be seen in the 
picture, beautiful, magnificent and tremendous could 
never be built for an American production for less 
than a million dollars. They greet the eye in such 
rapid succession that they might be described, in no 
tones of aspersion, as bewildering. 

Mr. May selected an excellent cast. The actors are 
possibly without reputation in Germany. It is safe 
to say that none of them with the exception of Mia May, 
the star, are known broadly. But under Mr. May's 
direction, each works with a skill so effective that the 
spectator is nearly obliged to forget there is acting 
going on before his eye. The Indian Yogi is a com- 
manding, inspiring figure. The Prince breathes pas- 

209 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

sion, hatred, cunning. The last extra, given a bit to 
perform, does it with amazing effect. 

Mr. May has given in "The Indian Tomb" a mar- 
velous demonstration of what tempo means. The whole 
tempo of his picture, once the story reaches India is 
slow — but never tiresome. He seems to have realized 
that a picture laid in a mystic locale, a locale strange 
to nearly everyone who frequents picture theatres, a 
locale enriched in poetry, fiction and song, as a land 
of uncanny magic, that such a picture demanded a slow, 
steady tempo. The effect thus achieved strengthens the 
story ten-fold. Played too fast in one phase or an- 
other, hurrying over one sequence to get to another, 
would have spoiled the magic effect of "The Indian 
Tomb" completely. 

When "The Indian Tomb" first was imported to 
these shores its length approximated eighteen thousand 
feetl An unheard of length, to be sure. Of course, it 
will not reach the American public in such an amount 
of footage. There is room for cutting, very careful 
trimming. But even if "The Indian Tomb" was shown 
here in all its abundance of footage, I doubt very much 
if it would have proved tiresome except to those with 
weak eyes. The magic of its story unfolded before a 
panorama of astounding scenes would hold the interest 
of the most jaded picture "fan" throughout its entire 
length. 

The Joe May serial, "The Mistress of the World" 
shown abroad in forty-eight reels has also been cut 
down considerably for American consumption. It was 
made quite some time previous to "The Indian Tomb" 

210 



JOE MAY: GERMAN DIRE CTOR 

and as a work of art cannot be compared with it. How- 
ever, throughout its various chapters, Mr. May shows 
the skill which was to attain its fullest flower in "The 
Indian Tomb." Here again are marvelous settings, 
here also does he show that he knows the value of 
tempo, although in achieving it he has often been forced 
to labor with poor mechanical effects. And here, too, 
does he know how to secure that awe-inspiring surprise 
by suddenly showing, unexpectedly but logically, the 
most amazing glimpses of extravagant, magnificent 
scenery. 

In the modern society drama, "Lavinia Morland's 
Confession," Mr. May has not bothered about big 
settings and has discarded the spectacular. And in this 
entirely different field of picture production he has 
emerged triumphant again with a gripping, intense 
drama, related by an accused woman in a crowded 
court room. Certainly everyone who sees the picture 
here is going to imagine himself just another spectator 
in that court. 

Those are the three reasons why Mr. May, in my 
mind, should be placed on a higher pedestal than the 
much praised Mr. Lubitsch. The latter has shown 
himself capable of producing spectacles, costume pic- 
tures. The former has shown himself capable of pro- 
ducing any sort of a picture — except a comedy. I don't 
think Mr. May could produce a comedy. His comedy 
touches in one of his pictures are awful. But there 
aren't many of them. And he didn't try any in "The 
Indian Tomb." 

211 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECT I N G 

Mr. May is a showman and an artist. He knows 
values. He knows and seems to know full well how to 
achieve the proper balance in his pictures. He knows 
detail and uses it to most efifective advantage. And 
above all, he seems to be a natural born picture story 
teller. He is as much a part of his art as it has been 
shown that Frank Borzage is a part of his. 

Mia May, his wife, is perhaps something about Joe 
May that American audiences will object to. Mia 
May is not young. Americans like young and pretty 
faces. Europeans, including Germans, it is said, again 
referring to the words of Mr. Lubitsch, tire of a pretty 
face unless it is accompanied by ability and even prefer 
a face not quite so pretty and not quite so young if the 
ability is to be found in it. 



212 



Chapter XXV 

ILLUSTRATING THE USE 
OF DETAIL 

^RINGING just the right 
amount of detail of story to 
the screen a rare accomplish- 
ment. — "The Law and the Wo- 
man" a practical illustration of 
the injection of the proper pro- 
portion 



213 



Chapter XXV 

The question of detail has come up so often in the 
discussion of various directors and in their various 
discussions regarding directing that a few more words 
are, perhaps, due on the all important matter. 

The injection of detail in a story is by right the work 
of the continuity writer. However, most the directors 
that have been referred to here, as said, are either their 
own continuity writers or they exercise such close super- 
vision or collaboration over and on their continuities 
that here at least the injection of detail is the director's 
duty. Even when a director follows a continuity closely 
without having had a hand in its construction he often 
realizes where detail will help the completed picture 
due to some peculiarity of setting and location, and so 
he may inject it of his own accord. 

Detail is, without doubt, an element that often dis- 
tinguishes good pictures from bad. A superfluity of 
story detail is a bad thing. If a director permits him- 
self to wander off the main track and introduce irrele- 
vant details believing that they have interest in them- 
selves alone, he soon finds trouble getting back to the 
main track again. 

On the other hand, knowing just where a little in- 
jection of detail, a little prolongation of this situation 
or that, will help a story, is a knack or a separate art 
that is by no means common among directors. To give 
this exceedingly technical matter a popular light it is 
best to site an instance where a picture was lifted into 

214 



ILLUSTRATING THE USE OF DETAIL 



the class of melodramatic masterpieces by the skillful 
use of it. This instance is represented by "The Law 
and the Woman," a picture directed by Penrhyn 
Stanlaws. 

This picture is based on the old Clyde Fitch play, 
"The Woman in the Case." The situation established 
is this : A woman of no virtue whatever brings evidence 
to bear against an innocent man who thereupon is tried 
and convicted of murder and is sentenced to die in the 
electric chair. The man's wife, convinced of his in- 
nocence, enters into the other woman's circle of friends, 
plays the part of a sister under the skin and ultimately 
succeeds in forcing a confession from her that frees 
her husband — at the last minute. 

This basic situation is rather old. It has appeared 
on the screen in various guises from time immemorial. 
The accused man — the last minute confession. The 
climax used to be the mad dash to the prison (the 
telephone wires were always out of order) and the 
rescue of the condemned just as the executioner was 
about to throw the electric switch. 

Naturally then, a picture-wise being knows full well 
the outcome of "The Law and the Woman" even while 
he is in the thick of the situation. The director knew 
this too — knew that his audience was going to know 
how his story ended. How then to make them forget 
that they knew it? How to make them so interested 
in the happenings on the screen that they were caught 
up in them and lost sight of the foregone conclusion 
altogether? The answer : By the judicious use of detail. 

This judicious application of detail is to be found 

215 



y" 



MOTION PICTURE DIR E C T I N G 

in "The Law and the Woman" as directed by Mr. 
Stanlaws. The wife is several times about to hear the 
confession from the lips of the other woman. "It's 
coming now," you think. But no! Some little detail 
arises to prevent it. The telephone rings and when 
the conversation is over the other woman's inclination 
for confidences has passed. Again the confession is 
about to come when the other woman (exercising the 
prerogative of her sex) suddenly changes her mind. 

A half dozen other such little details halt that con- 
fession, the while the spectator has completely for- 
gotten that he knows the outcome. All he is interested 
in is that confession. 

In the final climax when the desired words are 
wrenched from the woman's lips detail is again brought 
admirably into play. The woman's superstitions are 
preyed upon. She is alone at a table. A door slams. A 
shade flies up. Her nerves grow ragged. So do yours. 
Throughout it all the utmost suspense is maintained 
until finally when the confession comes you breathe 
the same sigh of wonderful thanks and relief that is 
breathed by the wife. 

For skillful use of detail then, Penrhyn Stanlaws' 
work in "The Law and the Woman" is commended. 
And in case I am not giving credit where credit is 
due, Albert S. LeVino prepared the continuity. 



216 



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Chapter XXVI 

MARSHALL NEILAN 

SUMMARIZES 

■ — ^ 

Jl^R. NEILAN, whose moods 
run the range of human 
emotions, believes that many di- 
rectors forget to put themselves 
in the places of their audiences, 
— Loss of proper perspective 
results. — Mr. Neilan also sum- 
marizes in such complete fash- 
ion that he concludes the argu- 
ment 



219 



Chapter XXVI 

It appears after all that Cecil De Mille is the only 
director in the producing art who doesn't believe in 
showing his players how to play a scene. Here comes 
Marshall Neilan with some words on directing and 
the first thing he says is : "One of the most potent assets 
of the director is his own ability to act. It is a difficult 
matter to tell a person how to do certain things if one 
doesn't know how to do it one's self. It is a simple matter 
to stop an actor in his work and tell him he isn't doing 
it right, but it is another matter entirely to get out on 
the set and show him the error of his ways before the 
camera. Therefore, a director's ability to act is a first 
.asset." 

This, coming on top of the De Mille formula is 
disconcerting. Disconcerting because both Mr. De 
Mille and Mr. Neilan manage to get the utmost from 
their players. And they go about it in entirely different 
ways it would seem. As a result neither one of them can 
be wrong and they both must be right. A cold can be 
cured by repeated swallows of hot scotch but others 
prefer to stuff themselves full of quinine and let it go 
at that. The cold is done away with in both cases. 
Hence good performances are seen in both Neilan and 
De Mille pictures. 
y^ Mr. Neilan elaborates further on the subject thus: 
"By the same token it is more or less impossible to 
correct the portrayal of a certain piece of business if 
you haven't the ability to demonstrate just how it should 

220 



MARSHALL NEILAN SUMMARIZES 

be corrected. In practically every scene that a director 
takes he is obliged first to get out on the set and show 
an actor or an actress how to perform a bit of business 
or how to register an expression. So, naturally a di- 
rector must be able to act. He may be a bad actor 
or a good one but as long as he is able to show what he 
wants done and how he wants it done his work is going 
to be much easier. 

"This is specially true in the handling of children on 
the screen. Children, talented or not, are not possessed 
of years of actual stage or screen experience which is 
necessary to give a performer the proper finesse and 
polish in actual screen work. The director with the 
ability to act can get out before the camera and go 
through the child's part for him, incorporating in it 
the polish that he desires the child to put into it. If 
the child is a good mimic the rest is easy. And I am 
not afraid that in mimicking me the child is going to 
^^give a mechanical performance." 

Mr. Neilan knows whereof he speaks when it comes 
to handling children. Two of his best pictures, "Pen- 
rod" and "Dinty" were stories with a boy actor, Wesley 
Barry, playing the principal role. In fact, it is due 
to Mr. Neilan's tutelage that young Barry has reached 
his present state of popularity. He has come under 
other directors besides Mr. Neilan but the teachings 
he received from the creator of his two best pictures 
still remain. 

Continuing on the same theme Mr. Neilan says: 
"The merit of an actor's performance depends in ratio 
on the director's ability to show him what he wants. 

221 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

This accounts for the reason that certain actors and 
actresses receive flattering praise for their performances 
under one director while under the next director they 
may fail miserably. Any number of such instances could 
be cited but I have lots of friends among the actors and 
actresses and I don't want to turn them into enemies 
over night." 

I do not altogether subscribe to this statement of Mr. 
Neilan's. It is quite true that players have gained fame 
under one director and then worked with another and 
fallen down on the job. In fact one producing company 
recently elevated a certain actress to stardom because of 
her excellent work in one of its big pictures. But as 
soon as she left the guidance of the director who made 
this picture her ability seemed to take wings and leave 
her in the lurch. 

But blaming these sudden transitions from good to 
bad on the directors ability to show an actor how to 
work, and the next fellow's refusal or inability to show 
him how is not, to my way of thinking, exactly right. 
It may have something to do with it but after all if a 
director shows all his players how he wants a scene 
done, the result, as Mr. De Mille pointed out, would 
eventually result in the entire cast giving mechanical 
imitations of the director in a protean act. An actor 
does better work for certain directors, included among 
which is Mr. Neilan, because for such directors he has 
respect, he believes in their ability, they retain his con- 
fidence. Then too Mr. Neilan and the others inspire an 
actor to his greatest efforts. The enthusiasm of the 
artistic director is communicated to the actor. If he 

222 



MARSHALL NEILAN SUMMARIZES 

is any sort of an actor he simply can't go wrong when 
working under the direction of a truly artistic director 
such as Mr. Neilan. 

"The dramatic sense — the sense of dramatic con- 
struction" continues Mr. Neilan, "is another highly 
important asset of the motion picture director. This 
remark is, of course, somewhat obvious but in my 
opinion there are too many so-called directors who turn 
out machine-made pictures and the chief reason that 
they are machine-made is because their makers don't 
know the least thing about construction. Half of them 
wouldn't know a dramatic situation if it was thrust 
under their various noses. 

"It doesn't make any difference whether this drama- 
tic sense is a result of years of study, of the drama or 
whether it is just a subconscious sixth sense thrown in 
along with the other five. It's the same in other branches 
of work, creative or otherwise. Some men become great 
generals through long years of study and application 
to the science of war. Another man just steps in and 
is able to converse with them on even terms because 
he is an instinctive general. In the motion picture 
producing art every director who has created a position 
for himself has either acquired thd dramatic sense 
through years of study or else has it ingrained in him 
so deeply that he couldn't lose it even if his job were 
cleaning streets. 

"There are many of our directors in the latter class. 
Fellows born with the dramatic sense. The art of 
picture producing has recruited so many young men 
that perhaps the majority of them must needs be put in 

223 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

this class. In the year to come I sincerely believe that 
the study of the creation of motion pictures will be 
taught as an art or craft just as playmaking is today. 
In fact, the scenario classes in many of the universities 
now are paving the way for the broader classes to 
come. Most of the dramatic scholars in the picture 
art have been recruited from the stage. These are 
the men who have the traditions and the teachings of 
drama at their finger tips. 

"Where does this sense help? A plain instance is 
the director's ability or inability to know when a situ- 
ation is handled correctly in a story. His dramatic 
sense will answer the question for him. If the situation 
is treated falsely he will know how to change it — he 
will instantly detect the fault and eliminate it." 

Here Mr. Neilan takes up the same line of thought 
that I endeavored to set down in the second chapter of 
** this book, y The power of visualization, which enables 
a director to detect the right from the wrong, is the 
second most important asset of the motion picture 
director. Without it he is totally at a loss. This dra- 
matic sense, or rather this dramatic-picture sense is 
really nothing less than the power of visualization. The 
two things work to the same end and, call it what you 
will, no man can ever hope to be a director and live 
to be recognized as such without the power of visual- 
ization or, according to Mr. Neilan, the sixth sense. 

"Perhaps I should place ahead of these two requi- 
sites," Mr. Neilan goes on to say, "the ability of the 
director to put himself in the place of his audience — to 
view his work through not only neutral but critical eyes. 

224 



MARSHALL NEILAN SUMMARIZES 

First it is necessary to keep within the understanding 
of the average photoplay audience. And, don't forget, 
that it has been discovered that the age of the average 
picture audience is startlingly low — somewhere in the 
'teens'. If we present things on the screen that are 
five years ahead of an audience we aren't the right 
kind of creators. It is just as bad to do this as to 
present something five years behind the times. 

"Like all directors I know there is room for im- 
provement in screen work. The art is young yet and 
has got to advance slowly, mainly because its tremen- 
dous and cosmopolitan following will only advance 
slowly. The motion picture can't afford to go too far 
ahead of its audience. It can keep a few paces ahead 
and encourage its audiences to come up those few paces 
but it can't go too far afield. 

"This matter of a director viewing his work from 
the vantage point of the audience has a more practical 
application as well. The director must retain his per- 
spective on his picture — must retain, that is, his first 
fresh perspective. So many directors become so sati- 
ated in their work that they lose the value of their 
pictures. They have gone over their stories in every 
scene from the scenario all through the process of di- 
recting and in the cutting room where they are con- 
fronted with the difficult task of bringing their pic- 
tures down to the required length they are inclined 
to cut out valuable story material. They know their 
stories so well that they forget an audience only sees 
them once, that an audience as a rule is in total ignor- 
ance of the story until it begins on the screen. There- 

225 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

fore every point of value in the story must be retained. 
And to accomplish this the director must jump outside 
himself and view his picture from the standpoint of the 
layman every time that he has anything to do with it. 

"This loss of perspective is one of the reasons why 
we have ''jumpy" pictures and pictures that seem lack- 
ing in continuity." 

Mr. Neilan concludes the subject with these words: 
"Above all, I consider that the director's appreciation 
of the human side of life is his greatest asset. Unless 
a director is thoroughly human down to the very earth 
and appreciative of the things in life that are common 
to the ordinary mortal he can not hope to attain any 
degree of success. If he himself has suffered, if he is 
a close student of human nature and can reflect the 
the human things on the screen then he automatically 
becomes a successful director— I might almost say a 
true artist." 

Mr. Neilan hasn't bothered to list his own abilities 
which are manifold. His moods run the range of 
human emotions. He can transport an audience with 
the quiet beauty and sincere pathos of his work as he 
did in the best Mary Pickford picture ever made, 
"Stella Maris," or he can become positively Goldberg- 
ian in his creations and rival Mack Sennett as he did 
in"Dinty." 

Mr. Neilan is his own best answer to all the argu- 
ments he has set forth here. 

I had intended to attach a summary to this book, 
listing the requirements of the successful director but 
on beginning the task I find that I would be merely 
duplicating Mr. Neilan's words. He has compiled 
the summary. 

226 




MARSHALL NEILAN 




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Chapter XXVII 

"BEST DIRECTED" 
PICTURES 

J LIST of contemporary pic- 
tures in each one of which 
the art of the director has been 
best displayed 



229 



Chapter XXVII 

I am not going to try, in conclusion, to list the best 
directed pictures made during the life of the picture 
producing art. Such a list would necessarily be over- 
long while those that we considered masterpieces three 
years ago are inferior when matched beside the worthy 
productions of today. The only picture that seems to 
have lived is "The Birth of a Nation." This first 
pretentious work of D. W. Griffith will naturally rank 
high in any list of ''best pictures." So, too, do some of 
the earlier Chaplin pictures which have been reissued 
many times under different titles. 

The list of best directed pictures appended therefore 
does not belong particularly to one period of producing 
activity. It does contain, however, pictures that will 
be as good five years from the moment of writing as 
they were when first shown on the screens of the pic- 
ture theatres. Time dims the quality of the great rank 
and file of pictures but it will have a difficult time 
rubbing the polish from these. Doubtless many others 
should be included. There are the delightful comedies 
of Constance Talmadge, the more serious works of 
Norma Talmadge, numbers of Mary Pickford pictures 
and numbers of Douglas Fairbanks pictures that will 
perhaps live longer than those included here. William 
S. Hart has immortalized himself forever yet recent 
pictures of his fail to react in as powerful a manner 
as his earlier work. 

Furthermore, there have been some exceedingly pop- 

230 



"BEST DIRECTED" PICTURES 



ular pictures that have been very badly directed. No 
effort has been made to include these. And no effort 
has been made to include minor pictures quite well 
directed. 

All points in the matter of direction have been con- 
sidered. Minor faults have been glossed over when the 
merits have swung the scales overwhelmingly in their 
direction. 

The list, finally, is not to be taken as anything more 
than contemporary. 

"Shoulder Arms" and "The Kid," directed by 
Charles Chaplin. Because, in addition to being the 
best comedies produced, they show a marvelous insight 
into human nature and because the dividing line be- 
tween their comedy and the tragedies that might result 
from the same situations, is but the width of a hair. 

"Way Down East," directed by D. W. Griffith. 
Because here is a masterly handled picturization of a 
famous old melodrama. Because the rough edges have 
been smoothed over by the master hand of the director 
and because it closes in the biggest thrill ever presented 
on the screen. 

"Orphans of the Storm," directed by D. W. Griffith. 
Because here is a masterly handled picturization of a 
famous old melodrama, etc. 

"Miss Lulu Bett" and "Midsummer Madness," di- 
rected by William C. De Mille. Because both pictures, 
dealing with classes of people remotely removed from 
one another, contain a penetrating and true study of 
character and because these characters have been welded 
together in both instances in potent, dramatic pictures. 



231 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and "The 
Conquering Power," directed by Rex Ingram. Because 
tragedy and spectacle has been handled in the one, 
and tragedy in the other, with the discriminating eye 
of an artist. Because each presents its director as able 
in creating an illusion on the screen so complete as to 
dissolve the theatre walls into a part of the picture 
itself. 

"The Three Musketeers," directed by Fred Niblo. 
Because it is the best of Douglas Fairbanks' many best. 
Because it displays the fact that its director knows how 
to apply modern technique to a classic and still preserve 
the worth of the classic. 

"Disraeli," directed by Henry Kolker. Because it 
is the best screen version of a celebrated play ever 
produced. 

"The City of Silent Men," directed by Tom Forman. 
Because it raises a crook melodrama to the level of 
high art. 

"Humoresque," directed by Frank Borzage. Because 
it is the most faithful presentation of racial traits and 
characteristics filmed. Because its director reveals in 
it his uncanny power of developing a screen character 
until you can almost hear it speak. 

"Sentimental Tommy," directed by John Robertson. 
Because a rare and beautiful story has been transferred 
to the screen without harm or loss and because in it its 
director gave one of the most eloquent answers ever 
given to those who claim there are no artists in the 
art of picture producting. 

"Peter Ibbetson," directed by George Fitzmaurice. 

232 



'BEST DIRECTED" PICTURES 



Because a rare and beautiful story has been transferred 
to the screen without harm or loss and because in it its 
director gave one of the most eloquent answers ever 
given to those who claim there are no artists in the art 
of picture producing. 

"Stella Maris," directed by Marshall Neilan. Be- 
cause it is the best picture in which Mary Pickford 
has ever appeared. / 

"Little Lord Fauntleroy," directed by Al Green 
and Jack Pickford. Because something approaching 
an artistic achievement has been made from this ancient 
too-sentimental work. 

"The Indian Tomb," directed by Joe May. Because, 
with the exception of humor, it blends every motion 
pictorial element in a whole so absorbing that time 
means nothing. 

"Tol'ble David," directed by Henry King. Because 
the spirit of the original work, a work of literary merit, 
has been skillfully communicated to the screen. 

"The Law and the Woman," directed by Penrhyn 
Stanlaws. Because an old plot has been translated into 
terms of intense melodrama through the judicious use 
of detail. 

"Scratch My Back," directed by Sidney Olcott. Be- 
cause it is an original, ingenious comedy done in excel- 
lent taste. 

"Over the Hill," directed by Harry Millarde. Be- 
cause it is a sentimental tear-jerker done in the most 
highly skilled fashion. 

"Forbidden Fruit," directed by Cecil B. De Mille. 

233 



MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING 

Because it represents its director at his exotic, most 
extravagant best. 

"Passion," directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Because it 
displays the art of handling big masses of people color- 
fully and because with its spectacular scenes there is 
a blending of an absorbing personal story. 

"Dinty," directed by Marshall Neilan. Because it 
is one of the most captivating, rollicking and delight- 
fully foolish things ever done on the screen. 

"Doubling for Romeo," directed by Clarence Bad- 
ger. Because it is one of the most captivating, rollick- 
ing and delightfully foolish things ever done on the 
screen. 

"The Silent Call," directed by Laurence Trimble. 
Because it is the best melodramatic novelty of the year. 

"The Miracle Man," directed by the late George 
Loane Tucker. Because — ^well, just because. 

"The Loves of Pharaoh," directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 
Because it is the best work of this director. Because 
in it he more nearly actually reaches his publicity 
pedestal than in any other of his pictures. 



234 



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